{"id":91355,"date":"2026-06-25T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=91355"},"modified":"2026-06-26T11:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:06:15","slug":"wheeling-decoded-how-property-owners-are-quietly-cashing-in-on-south-africas-renewable-energy-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/wheeling-decoded-how-property-owners-are-quietly-cashing-in-on-south-africas-renewable-energy-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheeling, decoded: how property owners are quietly cashing in on South Africa\u2019s renewable energy boom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWheeling is not a physics thing \u2013 it’s not about an electron moving from one place to another,\u201d explained Dr Werner van Antwerpen, head of corporate advisory at Growthpoint Properties, on The Outlier\u2019s latest Out to Lunch webinar. \u201cIt’s more of an accounting thing. You put electricity in at a specific meter \u2013 say, R1,000 \u2013 and you allocate that R1,000 to two buildings, R500 each, and then eventually you get a credit on the two buildings that you nominated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electricity traders, he said, are essentially \u201ca massive accounting and balancing engine\u201d that tracks what comes in and makes sure the credits land where they\u2019re supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a niche biogas deal to a national movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s first wheeling contract, by van Antwerpen\u2019s research, was signed in 2015, when a biogas plant in Bronkhorstspruit wheeled power to BMW\u2019s manufacturing facility<\/a>. It stayed a niche arrangement \u2013 typically one generator wheeling to one or two clients \u2013 until the electricity market opened up in 2022, when new legislation let independent power producers build projects to sell directly to private off-takers instead of going through the government’s renewable energy programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe landscape currently is changing dramatically, where you have several generators that need to be wheeled to several hundred buildings and endpoints,\u201d he said. \u201cMuch more complex \u2013 so your accounting systems need to be much more advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Property owners, their tenants and wheeled electricity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Because tariffs charged to tenants are regulated by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa, a landlord can\u2019t simply charge their tenants less because the power is wheeled. As with rooftop solar, a tenant \u201cusually doesn’t know if their energy comes from the national grid or if there’s a wheeled component of electricity tied to that specific building\u201d, van Antwerpen said.
To close that gap, Growthpoint built a product called e-CO2<\/a>, which passes two things on to tenants: renewable energy certificates (RECs) that they can use to cut their reported scope 2 emissions, and a financial credit on their rental invoice \u2013 \u201calmost like some of the retail banks do\u201d with cashback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The renewable energy certificates run on a blockchain platform that feeds the international I-REC registry in London, which prevents double counting. \u201cIf it’s been redeemed, it’s taken out of the whole blockchain circular environment,\u201d he said \u2013 and the certificates expire after a period of time, so tenants can\u2019t bank them across multiple reporting years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scope 2 emissions would come from buying power from Eskom or the municipality. \u201cMost of your emissions in a building will be scope 2 emissions,\u201d he said \u2013 which is exactly the category RECs are designed to offset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The e-CO2 programme currently covers nine office buildings in Sandton, chosen as a pilot strategically to help lease vacant space. There’s no technical reason why we can’t expand it elsewhere, van Antwerpen said, it was a strategic choice, not a limitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growthpoint also has a renewable energy certificate partnership with Nedbank covering retail premises it leases. Van Antwerpen says they are talking to other financial institutions. \u201cI think the big corporates are going to probably be the first movers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why tenants can\u2019t cut their own deal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tenants can\u2019t contract directly with a wheeling trader, van Antwerpen said, because the landlord holds the electricity supply agreement and is on the hook for the bill. Growthpoint instead contracts with trading platform Etana Energy, which aggregates generators on one side and signs customer agreements \u2013 including with Growthpoint \u2013 on the other. Any tenant benefit then flows through whatever programme the landlord chooses to offer, such as e-CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pooled wheeling: the Cape Town fix<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The standard wheeling process is strikingly manual: a generator\u2019s meter is read monthly, an allocation report is signed off at Eskom, and credits are applied to accounts \u2013 a process that gets unwieldy fast once hundreds of buildings are involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Growthpoint, its trader and the City of Cape Town spent roughly 18 months building something new: \u201cpooled wheeling.\u201d Under the model, the municipality bills a building only for fixed connection charges, while all wheeled and non-wheeled electricity charges are pushed to the trader to administer. \u201cThe administrative burden is taken away from the municipality and put onto the trader, which is their bread and butter,\u201d van Antwerpen said. \u201cThe municipality doesn’t need to build a massive administration team just to deal with wheeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cape Town was an early, willing partner \u2013 the city had already hosted South Africa\u2019s first municipal wheeling deal, from Constantia Village Shopping Centre to what is now the Ninety One building on 36 Hans Strijdom. \u201cThey understood the problem. They wanted to be proactive,\u201d van Antwerpen said. He believes the model can be copied elsewhere. Other municipalities are starting to engage with the team, said van Antwerpen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the new wholesale market changes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s incoming Wholesale Electricity Market will add three trading layers on top of today\u2019s bilateral power purchase agreements: day-ahead trading, where generators price tomorrow\u2019s electricity in advance, and a real-time balancing market. The latter, van Antwerpen said, is where things get genuinely new: \u201cIf I’m an independent power producer, I need to vouch that I will actually generate a thousand kilowatt-hours tomorrow. And if I don’t \u2013 if I generate 950 \u2013 there needs to be some other mechanism to quickly push 50 kilowatt-hours into the network,\u201d whether from battery storage or a fast-ramping gas turbine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That variability \u2013 a forecast sunny day that turns to rain, a wind farm that goes still \u2013 will only grow as more renewables come online, he said: \u201cIt’s probably not as bad now as it will be in five to ten years’ time\u2026 more and more variability and risk also comes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advice for landlords weighing wheeling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a landlord considering wheeling for the first time, van Antwerpen frames it as one choice: contract directly with an independent power producer, or go through a trader. Growthpoint chose the latter. \u201cThe electricity trader is becoming a massive accounting machine,\u201d he said \u2013 and unless a landlord has the scale to justify building that expertise in-house, a trader\u2019s existing systems and lower per-unit overhead usually win out.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is based on The Outlier\u2019s Out to Lunch webinar, in which journalist Gemma Ritchie interviewed Dr Werner van Antwerpen, head of corporate advisory at Growthpoint Properties.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1409],"tags":[],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-91355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webinar"],"acf":{"post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91367,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91355\/revisions\/91367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91355"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=91355"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=91355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}