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# South Africa is paying for power it throws away, so the minister is buying batteries, not solar panels
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/curtailment-payouts-ramokgopa-batteries-gas/
- Published: 2026-10-08T03:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T03:29:59.000Z
- Description: Payouts for wind and solar power the grid cannot take are heading for R2.4 billion this financial year, and the minister's fix is 9,600 megawatts of batteries and gas.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Policy, Business Bagel News, #big, #trending

Around midday, South Africa now has more electricity than it can use. Eskom's recovering coal fleet and fast-growing private generation have left a surplus that averages more than 4 gigawatts, mostly in daylight, according to the electricity minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

When that happens, the grid's system operator tells wind and solar farms to stop feeding power in, which is called curtailment. They still get paid. Their contracts are take-or-pay, so the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), which administers them, settles claims for the power it told them not to send. "We are throwing electricity away, and that's money," Ramokgopa said at a briefing in Pretoria on Wednesday.

Wind and solar take the hit because nothing else can give way. Coal plants are slow to throttle up or down, so they run through the day at a minimum level to be ready for the morning and evening peaks, and hydro and pumped storage are adjusted first. After that, the renewable farms are the only lever left.

## What switching off costs

The payouts have climbed fast. NTCSA's Akash Prakash told the Windaba wind conference in Cape Town on Tuesday that they went from R520 million in the 2025/26 financial year to an estimated R2.4 billion this one. By June a backlog of about R2 billion in unpaid claims had built up, which NTCSA said in July it had cut by a quarter.

Ramokgopa's own number is far bigger. At Windaba he warned that the country could lose R49 billion a year by keeping generation capacity capped or curtailed, and on Wednesday he said curtailment will make future private projects dearer to finance and more likely to fail.

## Batteries first, gas behind them

Wednesday's answer is the first batch of new capacity under the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, the government's blueprint for what gets built: 4,600 megawatts of battery storage and 5,000 megawatts of gas-fired power. Wind and solar wait for a later round. The batteries are meant to charge on power that would otherwise be thrown away and release it into the evening peak.

That is a big step up. The first battery round came to 513 megawatts across five projects and R15.4 billion of investment; this allocation is almost nine times larger, and Ramokgopa expects it to draw upwards of R90 billion.

Gas does a different job. It cannot soak up surplus power, so it is there for when wind and sun fall away, and Ramokgopa acknowledged the risks of importing it, from price spikes tied to the war in the Middle East to currency swings. "A generating plant without dependable fuel cannot provide dependable electricity," he said.

None of this moves power to where it is wanted. Ramokgopa wants stronger links to neighbouring grids so the surplus can be sold abroad, and told Windaba his counterparts in Zambia need 5,000 megawatts today. Eskom can string up about 800km of power lines a year, he said, when 1,450km a year is what is needed.