South Africans are beyond exhausted when it comes to power disruptions and are entirely fed up with false promises. Amid the fatigue and annoyance, it is possible to be convinced by solutions that appear to provide relief without fully understanding the cost of instant gratification.

Take the move to introduce powerships. The option of sailing vessels into some of South Africa’s deep-water harbours and plugging them into the country’s energy-starved grid may seem like a rational response to the crisis. Yet the approach South Africa has taken thus far has been far from rational and there are also serious pitfalls with the possible new approach.

The irrationality arose largely from the design of the programme launched to address what the Integrated Resource Plan of 2019 identified as a 2 000 MW supply deficit; a figure that was found wanting months later when the country descended into its first-ever Stage 6 event in December of 2019 and Eskom revealed the shortfall to be at least 4 000 MW.

Launched under the banner of the risk mitigation programme, or RMIPPPP, the scheme was dressed up as being ‘technology agnostic’, but had preconditions that gave powerships a clear advantage. Renewables-battery projects were not allowed to charge from the grid and, thus, had to be massively oversized to meet the scheme’s dispatch profile of providing electricity from 5:00 in the morning to 21:30 at night for 20 years – a profile that made little sense, given that more solar would surely be added over those two decades, fundamentally changing the daytime supply equation.

Amazingly, some hybrid projects did prevail. Nevertheless, the powerships took the lion’s share (1 200 MW) of the 2 000 MW allocated. Despite intensifying loadshedding, not one has been connected, however, owing to a staggering lack of adherence to environmental law. In addition, their licensing is being challenged, while the lack of transparency over gas pricing has left the door open for yet more litigation.

Instead of abandoning the ill-conceived RMIPPPP and moving on, as was the case when none of the wind projects prevailed during the most recent renewables round, even though a slight tweak to curtailment thresholds would have unlocked the projects, the RMIPPPP remains active.

That could well bite Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who wants powerships but for only five years.

If Karpowership eventually succeeds in lawfully obtaining its environmental authorisations, will it be disallowed from operating for 20 years, when some other delayed hybrid projects have been allowed to proceed? Besides a possible legal challenge from Karpowership itself, will he not also face litigation from those that can prove to the courts that even under a shortened timeframe, powerships operating at high load factors every day for five years would be prohibitively expensive relative to other solutions that could close any residual daytime deficit over the same period?

It’s time to opt instead for the path of least regret: feed-in tariffs to unlock rooftop generation and utility-scale wind and solar, supported primarily by batteries.