81296132-Consultant pool to provide strategic and operational support to the South African power sector reform

The overall objective of this assignment is to submit 6 recommendations on the implementation of power sector reform in South Africa to the actors responsible for managing and shaping it. In order to do so, standing pools of short-term experts (STEs) will be made available to provide rapidly mobilized energy, methodological and process advice to achieve reform impacts at national and municipal level. All activities will be informed by requests from our partners and guided by a steering group. The contractor shall provide two pools of experts which can be deployed flexibly according to the specific requests from the steering group. Experts assigned to the pools will be required to work supporting on assignments involving: 1) policy analysis and advice (e.g., the energy transition and provisions to increase private sector participation); 2) legal and regulatory advice; 3) the development of potential future roles and strategies for different stakeholders within the power sector and 4) transfer of experience, expertise and conceptual know-how (e.g. on methodological concepts and instruments) to project partners and beneficiaries. Furthermore, STEs will be requested to contribute to capacity development of partner institutions and individuals (e.g., trainings, workshops, peer-to-peer exchange). The following indicative focal areas have been identified Focal Area 1 consists of activities pertaining to the unbundling of the national utility, Eskom. The contractor"s role may include providing recommendations on the unbundling from a policy, legal and regulatory perspective, with specific emphasis on provisions to ensure the independence of the Transmission entity. Additional support to the functionalization of the Market Operator and Central Purchasing Agency function within the Transmission entity. Focal Area 2 consists of the design of measures to promote private sector participation in the electricity industry. The contractor"s role may include recommendations on market design, transition mechanisms and other mechanisms to increase private sector participation such as net billing and feed-in tariff schemes. Focal Area 3 consists of activities pertaining to the distribution sector. The contractor"s role may include providing recommendations on the optimal role, structure and business models for an electricity distributor in a modern liberalized industry. This area will also incapsulate activities relating to municipal pricing, including the assessment of municipal cost of supply studies. Focal Area 4 consists of activities pertaining to support of the further development of the legal and regulatory frameworks within the industry. This may include legislation such as the Electricity Regulation Act (ERA) and Electricity Pricing Policy (EPP) and regulatory provisions on, for example, the unbundling of tariffs and the requirements for the provision of non-discriminatory grid access. The tasks to be carried out by the various experts and Team leader are anticipated to be 655 expert days for execution of the individual assignments. A sufficient travel budget will be made available and is to be considered by the bidders as part of their bid. The contract period during which the services described are to be provided is from contract award until 30.11.2024. The number of expert days corresponds to the working days.