Energy Launchpad International aims to bridge the gap between UK innovators and international markets.

The main challenges can be grouped into two main issues: (1) understanding the market and (2) establishing relationships with local stakeholders.

Our Energy Market Deep Dives offers insight into the mechanics of a country’s power system, with a focus on smart and clean energy solutions. They include case studies of pilots and local business models and the references section can be used to link to further reading. Our deep dives are a valuable resource for innovators to use in creating their export roadmap, giving them access to relevant data and sources of information that they may not have the resources to collect themselves.

Key points

South Africa energy market deep dive explores:

• The makeup of the South African power system, including the country’s installed capacity, power mix, and governmental stakeholders.
• The issues that the South African power system is currently facing, including rolling blackouts, the reasons for these, as well as the environmental and economic impact on the country.
• Renewables procurement by the state-owned utility in the past, present, and future, as well as the policies this procurement is based on.
• The transmission upgrades worth £8.95 billion needed to enable South Africa’s green energy transition and relieve congestion.
• Recent regulatory changes that have made it possible for both private sector and municipal actors to commission embedded generation projects up to 100 MW without a generation license.
• Storage, both utility-scale and behind-the-meter, which will play an incredibly important role in the South African green economy in the near future.
• The electric vehicle market in South Africa.
• The green hydrogen market, although nascent, is starting to see projects being planned, with extensive public-private co-operation.