South Africa's power landscape is undergoing a rapid structural change that is exposing a new vulnerability: accounting systems and corporate finance teams that are not yet adapted to a decentralised electricity market. In the first half of 2026, independent power producers added 1.92GW to the system as 17 projects reached commercial operation, signalling an acceleration in private generation deployment.
From single supplier to market transactions
Regulatory changes over the past five years have shifted how electricity is produced and traded. In 2021 the generation licensing threshold rose from 1MW to 100MW. Then, in January 2023, amendments to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act removed licensing for facilities wheeling power to customers across third-party networks, regardless of size. That change replaced permission with registration and opened the door to a wave of new projects.
The response was immediate. During the first quarter of the 2026/2027 period, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) registered 124 generation facilities with a combined capacity of 804MW and declared investment totalling R20.2-billion. Those figures underline how quickly new producers have appeared and how the buyer-seller relationship has changed.
Wheeling and pooled supply are changing procurement
Where once a business might sign a bilateral contract with a single plant, many buyers are now procuring power via traders and pooled wheeling arrangements. The city of Cape Town has been an early adopter. Growthpoint Property, the trader Etana Energy and the city announced pooled wheeling across the municipal network that allocates electricity from the Boston hydroelectric plant in the Free State to multiple buildings rather than matching generation to a single site.
Growthpoint has said it plans to extend the model to more than 30 properties in the city. That approach — moving electrons across third-party networks and allocating them to different customers — changes the nature of the contractual relationship. As Discovery Green CEO Andre Nepgen put it, a large share of newly closed private generation has been channelled through intermediaries:
“About 80%”
That remark was used to illustrate how much of the recent procurement is taking place through traders rather than direct bilateral agreements between generator and buyer.
Why this becomes an accounting problem
The shift to a market model brings benefits — more generation capacity, new investment and options for businesses to source renewable power. But it also creates questions for finance teams that have structured budgets and accounting processes around buying from a single supplier. Organisations must now account for procurement that resembles market trading: allocation across multiple sites, wheeling fees, trades between intermediaries, and more complex metering and settlement arrangements.
The article that prompted this overview notes that while the grid stopped being a single-supplier system some time ago, many of the organisations buying from it have not updated their accounting practices to reflect what that reality means for their books. Measurement — once a key blocker for more granular procurement — has been addressed by newer technologies that enable near real-time visibility of consumption and allocations, easing one barrier to change.
Numbers at a glance
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| IPPs reaching commercial operation (H1 2026) | 17 projects — 1.92GW |
| Facilities registered with Nersa (Q1 2026/2027) | 124 facilities — 804MW — R20.2-billion investment |
What to watch
- Whether corporate finance departments and auditors update accounting policies and procurement rules to reflect wheeling and market-based procurement.
- How settlement and metering arrangements scale as pooled wheeling expands across municipal and Eskom networks.
- The role of traders and intermediaries in price formation and risk allocation for buyers that previously relied on single-supplier contracts.
The rapid deployment of private generation is a positive development for capacity, investment and the push to renewables. But as the market becomes more complex, the administrative and accounting systems that support energy procurement must evolve at the same pace. If they do not, the next energy crisis may unfold not on the grid but on balance sheets and in corporate ledgers.
