Executive Director: Power Supply and Regulatory Strategy

Purpose of the role
The Executive Director: Power and Regulatory Strategy, at Phelan eFuels, will have overall responsibility and leadership for the strategy to secure, manage and continuously optimise electricity for the Hopefield 140,000 t/pa eSAF Project. The requirement will grow from an initial 700MW, to 2GW and onwards to 4GW over the designed stages. This is substantially broader than a conventional power procurement role.
The position leads Phelan Green’s strategic South African interface with Eskom, NTCSA, NERSA, Government and electricity-market participants, ensuring that Hopefield has secure, internationally competitive and regulatory-compliant electricity throughout the life of the Project.
The successful candidate will combine strong commercial and electricity-market expertise with a deep understanding of South African transmission, wheeling, PPAs, tariffs and regulation. Critically, the role must look beyond today’s regulatory environment, anticipating and helping to shape policy and market changes that could materially affect Hopefield’s electricity cost, security of supply and international competitiveness.
Key responsibilities
1. Power supply strategy
Take overall ownership of the Hopefield electricity supply strategy:
• Develop and continuously optimise the Project’s renewable electricity portfolio.
• Integrate Phelan-owned solar, wind and BESS with third-party renewable power.
• Structure firm, interruptible and flexible electricity supply.
• Optimise generation profiles against electrolyser and process-plant demand.
• Integrate battery storage (BESS) and other flexibility solutions.
• Manage intermittency, balancing and residual grid requirements.
• Drive strategies to minimise the Project’s delivered electricity cost.
The objective is a secure, flexible and lowest-cost power portfolio capable of supporting continuous industrial-scale hydrogen and eSAF production.
2. Eskom and NTCSA interface
Act as Phelan Green’s senior representative on material electricity matters with Eskom and NTCSA:
• Grid connection, capacity and transmission arrangements.
• Wheeling agreements and charges.
• Use-of-system, network, capacity and standby tariffs.
• Curtailment arrangements, and interruptible and curtailable load structures.
• Metering, settlement and reconciliation.
• Transmission development and future grid expansion affecting Hopefield and its renewable generation.
Maintain senior relationships across Eskom and NTCSA, and drive the resolution of issues affecting the Project.
3. NERSA and regulatory strategy
Lead the Group’s electricity regulatory engagement with NERSA, including:
• Electricity tariff methodologies and wheeling regulations.
• Transmission and distribution charges; network, capacity and standby charges.
• Curtailment rules and electricity trading rules.
• Licensing and registration requirements.
• Implementation of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act and wider market reform.
Where proposed regulatory changes affect Hopefield, lead Phelan Green’s response and coordinate submissions and engagement with NERSA, Government and industry bodies.
4. Electricity market reform
Maintain a forward-looking view of South Africa’s rapidly evolving electricity market: not only the regulations that apply today, but the likely market structure over the next 5, 10 and 20 years, including:
• Development of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market, and Market and System Operator arrangements.
• Bilateral trading, and day-ahead and balancing markets.
• Ancillary services and flexible-demand participation.
• Curtailment and congestion management, and BESS market participation.
• Renewable energy certificates and environmental attributes.
• Cross-border opportunities through the Southern African Power Pool.
Advise management on how Hopefield can position itself to benefit commercially from market reform, rather than simply respond to it.
5. Power procurement and PPAs
Lead the team responsible for the commercial structuring and procurement of the Project’s external electricity requirements:
• Identifying and evaluating power suppliers, and negotiating long-term PPAs.
• Evaluating fixed, indexed and market-linked pricing.
• Managing take-or-pay, generation-profile and curtailment-allocation risk.
• Change-in-law provisions, and transmission and wheeling risk.
• Credit and security requirements.
• PPA flexibility appropriate to electrolyser operations.
Work closely with the Group’s commercial, legal, engineering and finance teams to ensure that power arrangements support the overall economics of the eSAF Project.
6. Power portfolio management
Support the Power Portfolio Management team in establishing the systems needed to manage Hopefield’s electricity portfolio in operation, with real-time visibility across the full chain:
Generation → Grid → Wheeling → Storage → Electrolysis → Process plant
The operational team will be responsible for generation and demand forecasting, dispatch and BESS optimisation, nominations and scheduling, imbalance management, electricity trading, curtailment, settlement, reconciliation and electricity-cost reporting. The Executive Director will keep these activities aligned with the Group’s power strategy and continuously drive down the delivered electricity price.
7. RFNBO and eSAF electricity compliance
Work closely with the sustainability and certification teams to ensure the electricity architecture meets international certification requirements, including:
• Additionality of renewable electricity.
• Temporal and geographic correlation, including hourly matching.
• Use of grid electricity.
• Power purchase structures, renewable attributes and guarantees of origin.
• EU RFNBO requirements and their future evolution.
Power decisions must therefore be assessed against both the delivered electricity cost and the value of the resulting certified eSAF.
8. Government and policy engagement
Support senior management in engagement with the Department of Electricity and Energy, the Presidency, National Treasury, the dtic, Eskom, NTCSA, NERSA, the Western Cape Government and industry organisations. A central objective is to ensure policymakers understand the distinctive characteristics and national economic value of large-scale green hydrogen and eFuel projects, and to advocate appropriate treatment of flexible, interruptible, export-oriented industrial loads that support, rather than burden, the electricity system.
Strategic mandate
Hopefield should not be treated as just another large industrial electricity consumer. It represents a new category of flexible industrial load, capable of:
• Absorbing renewable electricity when it is available.
• Reducing demand when the grid is constrained.
• Using electricity that would otherwise be curtailed.
• Supporting investment in additional renewable generation.
• Providing flexibility through electrolysers and BESS.
• Converting South African renewable electricity into high-value export products.
The Executive Director will help establish the regulatory and commercial framework through which green hydrogen and eFuels become an extension of South Africa’s renewable electricity export market.