Public and private electricity supply industry stakeholders came together for a capacity building workshop in Mbabane, Eswatini. The Eswatini Energy Regulatory Authority (ESERA), the Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) and members of the Grid Code Review Panel attended the GET.transform supported event to inform preparations for a revision of the national grid codes.
Eswatini’s electricity sector is currently undergoing several market changes driven by policy reforms and an increased uptake of distributed electricity generation. Since releasing the National Energy Policy of 2018, Eswatini seeks to ensure a liberalised sector with a high presence of local generation capacity and increased private sector participation to enhance the security of supply. On the distributed energy generation aspect, customers are increasingly installing embedded generators for own use with the desire to export excess electricity to the national grid.
These new customer patterns and reforms together with latest developments in renewable energy technologies, amongst others, call for a revision of Eswatini’s grid code to ensure a safe, and reliable operation of the power system. Next to providing market participants with clear, non-discriminatory and predictable rules to support renewable energy integration into the grid, the revised grid code must also continue to answer to the current power system’s operational requirements and further provide certainty and help reduce regulatory and investor risks to participating in the local power sector.
The review of two sub-codes namely, the Network Code (NC) and Renewable Power Plant Code (RPPC), was completed in January 2023 whereby the RPPC was revised and changed to be a Connection Code which also aligns with the Southern African Community Development Community (SADC) Regional Grid Code to ease potential cross-border trading. All individual code revisions are now being aligned and harmonised with the SADC Regional Grid Code and international best practice cognizant of the local sector context.
The two-day capacity building workshop in support of this Grid Code review effort was delivered by Energynautics on behalf of GET.transform.