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JOHANNESBURG, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Solar power projects funded by South Africa's Standard Bank (SBKJ.J) will add 1,500 megawatts to the national grid by the end of 2024, the lender said, accounting for 5% of the total available grid capacity according to Reuters calculations.
Africa's most advanced economy is facing its worst ever electricity crisis with state utility Eskom cutting off supply for two to fours hours daily to prevent a grid collapse. Since last year it had to implement sometimes up to 10 hours of power cuts.
This forced the government to urgently ease regulations in the renewable energy sector to stimulate investment and encourage companies and households to adopt rooftop solar and slash reliance on the state grid.
"Technologies have improved, processes have improved. It's probably 16 months now (to build solar plants)," Zaid Moola, Standard Bank's head of corporate and investment banking for South Africa, said, adding previously it took three years.
The expected 5% of additional power to the national grid from the Standard Bank-funded projects awarded to companies last year is close to the shortfall in power demand and supply the country faces, a Reuters analysis showed.
The government introduced two rounds of renewable power purchase programmes in the last three years with a total capacity of up to 4,500 MW as it urgently sought to mitigate the power crisis.
As these purchase rounds were coming after a hiatus of over seven years, major global companies backed by local banks participated and bid aggressively at cheap tariffs to win bids.
But most of the projects have failed or been delayed with only Standard Bank-backed projects able to raise finance, Lungisa Fuzile, CEO of the bank's South African operations said during a presentation.
The first of these projects started feeding the grid from last week, he added.
Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
