Energy regulator Nersa has issued four import-export electricity licences, but the import and export trading rules it had scheduled to go for approval in March “have not yet been developed”.
Effectively, Nersa is licensing private traders while the rules they are meant to trade under remain unfinished. Licensed traders are still waiting for a functioning market, Eskom’s legal challenge to five of their licences is on hold until the rules are final, and another cross-border applicant is in the queue.
Private grid builders face a similar gap: the rules that determine how their costs reach electricity tariffs have been approved but not gazetted, and are being rewritten after stakeholders warned they could hurt project bankability and funding.
In July 2025, Nersa said it was “formulating electricity trading rules, including import and export trading rules”. Its estimated timeline had “import/export/cross-border trading rules” going for approval in March 2026, with “rules gazetted” in June 2026.
Cross-border electricity trading falls within the jurisdiction of the Southern African Power Pool.
Nersa
“Cross-border electricity trading falls within the jurisdiction of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP),” it told TechCentral. Traders using the SAPP must meet its registration requirements and comply with its market rules and procedures, it said.
Domestic trading rules are late, too: the same timeline had them going for approval in November 2025. They are still pending, and Eskom’s court review of five trading licences is stayed until the regulatory framework is finalised, TechCentral reported last week.
Nersa said it has issued 25 electricity trading licences and four import-export licences. It will hear Remgro-backed Energy Exchange of Southern Africa’s application for another on 7 December. Two of the four are known: GreenCo Power Services received the first in October 2024, Polity reported, and Enpower Trading received one in 2025, according to Green Building Africa.
Grid rules approved, not gazetted
Nersa also said its cost recovery rules for independent transmission providers (ITPs), the private companies government wants to build and own new transmission lines, were approved on 2 December 2025 but “will only be gazetted once this round of consultations has been concluded and the rules finalised”.
Yet the approved rules say they “are effective from the date of approval”, and Nersa approved sharing them with the department of energy for the ITP bid package.
A consultation paper, published on 30 October, says key stakeholders raised concerns that some provisions “may adversely affect project bankability and funding”. It proposes renaming them the ‘cost recovery rules for transmission capacity purchases’, because the current title “may create the impression that the rules apply directly to ITPs”.
The draft amended rules replace “a reasonable margin or return” with “a risk-adjusted return”. They also loosen the treatment of termination costs, tying them to the termination scenarios in each transmission service agreement. Defaults would be excluded only if “not contemplated under the applicable termination scenario”, and loss of future profits “shall not automatically qualify” as recoverable, rather than being ruled out. Nersa said engagements had revealed “the potential unintended exclusion of certain legitimate costs from recovery”. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
