South Africa

In South Africa the inability of Government / Eskom and the Municipalities to agree on a way forward pertaining to the implementation of the Regional Electricity Distributors [REDs] effectively resulted in a lockout for private utility players in the Electricity Distribution Industry in South Africa. No Municipality has been able to enter into any long term utility agreements with private enterprise due to the pending implementation of the REDs – having been ongoing since 1997. On the other hand, Eskom as the single buyer of electricity, has inadvertently blocked any private players in the South African generation and distribution market due to their dominant position in the generation and distribution business, coupled with unsustainable low tariffs which do not allow for the true cost recovery of electricity generated.

Rural has however identified a market opportunity embedded in the electricity industry, pertaining to electricity distribution in large scale private property developments. It is specifically with this in mind that Rural targeted the large property owners to conclude long term electricity offtake and management agreements, which resulted in Rural building a solid debtor book currently comprising of a 10,000 users in Southern Africa.

Rural has to date secured long term contracts with property owners, controlling close to R25bn worth of commercial property, consuming around 200 MVA of electricity. Rural is able to accurately meter and monitor the 5,000 plus electricity users in South Africa to the point where if someone switches on a kettle, it is actually depicted on the real time system. Rural currently handles 360,000 data transactions daily, which is probably the biggest remote metering and billing network/database in Africa. With the Netelek technology deployed and utilised by Rural, one of the key barriers to free trade has been overcome in that the electricity consumption profiles are available, which can be overlayed on a banking system to commence trade and transacting of electricity outside of parastatal / government involvement in the near future.

Although it is a pity that South Africa finds itself in its presently troublesome energy related state. REMIG, via Rural is well poised to make a definite positive impact on the electricity landscape in Southern Africa with their focus on renewable electricity generation, electronic metering, monitoring and billing platform.