By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The City of Ekurhuleni (COE) has secured a Section 34 Ministerial determination under the Electricity Regulation Act enabling it to procure 2 400 MW of renewables and gas-fired electricity capacity from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
This was announced by Electricity and Energy Minister, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who, together with City of Ekurhuleni Mayor Nkosindiphile Xhakaza, led a media briefing in Tshwane on Monday, 19 October 2026.
The programme is expected to attract more than R16 billion in private-sector investment, with the City aiming to generate about 95% of its current electricity demand.
Ramokgopa said that the model will allow Ekurhuleni to diversify its electricity supply without using municipal funds to finance the programme.
The minister said diversifying electricity generation was important to strengthening energy security, particularly amid geopolitical uncertainty, while ensuring that sufficient electricity was available to support economic growth.
He added that increasing the use of renewable energy, supported by reliable and dispatchable generation, could help make electricity more affordable.
The permission to procure up to 2,400 megawatts of new generation capacity marks a major step towards reducing its dependence on Eskom.
No project specifics were immediately provided, including as to where the GtP plants would secure their feedstock, with Xhakaza indicating only that 75 individual IPP partners had been identified through two separate bid windows that had been undertaken some years ago.
In the absence of the determination, the metropolitan council had been unable to conclude the envisaged 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with these IPPs and the procurement programme had, thus, been on hold since 2021.
The Ekurhuleni determination was the third to be approved in favour of a metropolitan council, with the first 400 MW determination secured by the City of eThekwini, in KwaZulu-Natal, and the second 220 MW approved in favour of the City of Cape Town, in the Western Cape.
The scale of the Ekurhuleni determination, which Ramokgopa said had received the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) concurrence and had also been communicated with the National Treasury, was significantly larger than those two earlier determinations.
Xhakaza said it opened the way for combined investments worth some R6.2-billion and reported that a sod-turning ceremony for the first 25 MW solar PV project had been scheduled for Thursday, October 22. No further details were provided, however.
Should the full capacity allocation be implemented at the tariff levels indicated by the IPPs, the city estimates that it could secure savings of R36-billion relative to the cost of the bulk electricity it would have purchased from Eskom over the period.