https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-02-24-sas-power-market-flips-as-eskom-monopoly-ends-municipalities-face-squeeze/

So, if the monopoly is over, who will be subsidising non-paying entities and smelters?

21 minutes ago, frivan said:

So, if the monopoly is over, who will be subsidising non-paying entities and smelters?

Surely contracts in place will run their course. I read it as a transmission group and various producers can now tender their power for the 6 hour blocks at different prices. Eskom did do it in house decades ago. High cost power stations would supply when there are generators that faulted.

19 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

Surely contracts in place will run their course

Agreed. However, I think some municipalities don't have contracts and are not paying... When will the law of Transvaal kick in?

3 hours ago, frivan said:

So, if the monopoly is over, who will be subsidising non-paying entities and smelters?

Some of those smelters are already wheeling across the grid from solar plants they own or have contracts with.

What I don't grok is how this works in times of poor generation. They can't create a virtual circuit within the greater grid. Or can they?

Edited February 28Feb 28 by Bobster.

3 hours ago, frivan said:

So, if the monopoly is over, who will be subsidising non-paying entities and smelters?

There are two classes of non-payers. Those who really cannot pay, and those who can but opt to not.

This is an interesting question. Consider COJ. There is a tariff for indigent residents. This is limited - 250kWh a month. The City provides this subsidy, which is another way of saying that those who pay are subsidising the indigent.

If the IPPs get to sell directly to the end user then that model has to change. If the IPPs sell to a city or are 100% owned by the city then it works as it currently does.

Maybe city pays IPPs to provide a limited supply to the indigent households.

2 hours ago, Bobster. said:

There are two classes of non-payers. Those who really cannot pay, and those who can but opt to not.

This is an interesting question. Consider COJ. There is a tariff for indigent residents. This is limited - 250kWh a month. The City provides this subsidy, which is another way of saying that those who pay are subsidising the indigent.

If the IPPs get to sell directly to the end user then that model has to change. If the IPPs sell to a city or are 100% owned by the city then it works as it currently does.

Maybe city pays IPPs to provide a limited supply to the indigent households.

My own thoughts will be that the IPPs that tendered to supply will be at a x rate and what they supply is metered. Thus the power network is intact even if the generation as we know it now is on low capacity. Eskom just becomes a supplier as others will be into the network.

14 hours ago, frivan said:

So, if the monopoly is over

Now Excom must also be stopped from prescribing one-sided regulations on private home-generated power in order to "keep control" - part of the current government's inherited, communist inspired, philosophy that the state must maintain control of everything...

9 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

My own thoughts will be that the IPPs that tendered to supply will be at a x rate and what they supply is metered. Thus the power network is intact even if the generation as we know it now is on low capacity. Eskom just becomes a supplier as others will be into the network.

I'm missing something. Say an IPP stays on and Eskom stops generating. Now demand > supply. So how do the householders contracted to that IPP get their supply without Eskom customers taking some of it? In fact how does the grid stay up? Once electricity is fed into the grid then it's all in one pool.

Though there must be this situation in Europe surely. AIUI in the UK I don't buy from the IPP, I buy from a reseller who has bought a certain amount of capacity. What happens when demand exceeds supply?

1 hour ago, HennieL said:

Now Excom must also be stopped from prescribing one-sided regulations on private home-generated power in order to "keep control" - part of the current government's inherited, communist inspired, philosophy that the state must maintain control of everything...

The technical regulations are actually not imposed by Eskom. Those are imposed by SANS, not for any commercial motive. Where Eskom, City Power etc might want to sharpen their pens is on the matter of tariffs.

4 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

. Now demand > supply. So how do the householders contracted to that IPP get their supply without Eskom customers taking some of it? In fact how does the grid stay up? Once electricity is fed into the grid then it's all in one pool.

Though there must be this situation in Europe surely. AIUI in the UK I don't buy from the IPP, I buy from a reseller who has bought a certain amount of capacity. What happens when demand exceeds supply?

Surely there will be a way of managing it via the Transmission system. LS as we have know it. Those of us exporting power do so even when we have LS while we have grid. It still remains a sum of the whole available power. For decades those in the industry complained that the power ESK Transmission were charging too much to transport power if one looked how much they internally paid the ESK generation business unit to what they were selling to major consumers.

My thought will be that resellers are the ones buying in bulk and selling to customers very much like banks are issuing SIMS but using the mobile cell networks or the way some cell ISPs use roaming where they don't have their own towers

Welcome to the ZA with major wheeling just as ESK have been wheeling from up north to the south with most generation from the coal fields in the old Transvaal.

It looks like the situation in Europe and UK is that the grid operator prioritises the grid and doesn't worry about billing. If a particular generator fails on a day then others will be asked to make up the short fall, and the errant generator has to pay for the electricity they were supposed to provide.

If demand > supply and there are no generators with space capacity, or that capacity is not enough to make up the short fall, then the grid operator will shed to protect the grid.

In the greater Cape Town transmission system, individual blocks can be managed at a switching control station in Newlands. It even goes as far as individual sub-stations if necessary

On the wall, measuring 12m x 4m is a display of the area served by City of Cape Town as far as Gordon's Bay. Each sub-station is identifiable and the operator can see the local load

If for instance a sub-station in Fish Hoek fails or is undergoing maintenance, supply can be diverted (up to a point) from another area