South Africa, Feb. 4 -- Grid access remains the most pressing bottleneck in South Africa's energy transition, regardless of the Electricity Regulation Amendment (ERA) Act, which lays the groundwork for a fully independent Transmission System Operator (TSO).

The challenge lies not in the legislation itself but in the capacity and infrastructure of the grid, which requires significant expansion to meet the surging demand for renewable energy.

The current grid infrastructure is heavily concentrated in the coal belts of the northern parts of the country, where traditional power generation assets have been located.

Historically, this "pipeline" of transmission capacity has been wide at the top, where power is generated, and gradually narrow...