Grid access, battery energy storage and the skills needed to maintain South Africa’s rapidly expanding solar fleet emerged as the defining issues for the solar PV industry at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA), held in Johannesburg last week alongside the association’s annual industry awards and gala dinner.
The AGM served a dual purpose: reporting back to members on the activities and initiatives delivered by the SAPVIA secretariat over the 2025/26 financial year (April 2025 to March 2026), as captured in the association’s annual report, and setting out the work programme for the financial year now underway.
“The focus remains consistent with the strategy our members have endorsed,” said Dr Rethabile Melamu, CEO of SAPVIA. “We will continue to advocate for a regulatory and policy landscape that enables greater uptake of solar PV, to inform and educate both our members and broader society on the role solar can play in individual lives and in the economy, to build strategic partnerships with government, and to communicate effectively about the sector’s progress.”
Grid access: the industry’s most pressing challenge
Members used the AGM to sharpen the association’s mandate on grid-related matters, which continue to affect projects from early development through to advanced construction. Key priorities agreed for the year include:
- Transparency in the grid connection queue: SAPVIA will press Eskom to make the connection queue publicly available, so that developers can see who is in the queue and how long applications have been pending. Eskom’s (limited) initiatives to date are acknowledged.
- Implementation of the approved grid capacity allocation rules: While NERSA approved a final set of rules last year, Eskom’s Grid Access Unit is still applying the interim rules introduced as a stop-gap measure at the height of load shedding. SAPVIA has begun engaging NECOM 3.0, Eskom and NERSA to resolve the impasse.
- Expansion and strengthening of the grid: The association engages the IPP Office regularly on the progress of the Independent Transmission Programme (ITP). The pre-qualification phase has been concluded and the request for proposals is expected soon.
- The fifth South African Renewable Energy Grid Survey: SAPVIA has committed to the next iteration of the survey to establish the status of the national pipeline of renewable energy projects.
This work will be driven by SAPVIA’s Grid Access Working Group, in close partnership the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA), the Department of Electricity and Energy and its entities, NERSA, the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA) and the grid access unit within Eskom.
“There is a great deal happening around grid, and it affects a large share of our members. Our objective is simple: to remove the barriers standing in the way of members deploying their projects,” said Melamu.
Storage, operations and maintenance, and end-of-life management
Beyond grid access, the AGM confirmed three additional focus areas for the coming year.
SAPVIA’s newly launched Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) working group – which attracted more than 100 participants at its first session – will work to ensure that storage is properly regulated, that appropriate market codes are in place, and that localisation opportunities are supported, linking to the association’s ongoing work under the South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM).
A second working group will address operations and maintenance (O&M). With the country’s installed solar base having roughly doubled over the past three to four years, members have identified a skills gap in O&M as well as the need for standardised approaches to maintaining these assets.
The association will also begin exploring the end-of-life management of solar components – early-stage work that will grow in importance as the first generation of large-scale assets matures.
Building on the success of its inaugural edition, the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association Industry Awards returned for a second year to recognise the individuals, projects, and organisations driving innovation, growth, and meaningful impact across South Africa’s solar PV sector. (A full list of winners appears in the footnotes.)
The day also saw the election of the new members of SAPVIA’s Governing Committee. De Villiers Botha was elected Chairperson, supported by commissioners Adv. Mtho Xulu, Antje, Klauss-Vorreiter, Frank Spencer, Prenesen Govender, Ziska McGilton, and Wale Aboyade. The governing committee will serve a one-year term of office.
