Six new regional market products go out for comment, and one of them is the resale of firm transmission capacity.

A large power user holding firm transmission capacity it cannot always use, or buying power across a border, now has a published account of how such capacity might one day be resold.

The Southern African Power Pool has published six issues papers on market products it is studying, and has set sessions for 21 and 22 October 2026 at which stakeholders can comment on site or online. The papers were prepared with support from the ENGAGE project on Africa's energy transition, funded by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and run in partnership with GET.transform.

Three of the six bear directly on what an industrial buyer can contract for. One would let firm transmission capacity be resold, so that rights on an interconnector could change hands rather than sit unused. Another would offer participants ways to cover themselves against short-term price swings and to plan finances with more confidence in a system taking on more renewable generation. A third would build a regional market for ancillary services, the system support functions that keep the grid stable, as an extension of the balancing market already running.

The remaining three concern the environmental attributes of electricity rather than its delivery: a certificate market for renewable output, a day-ahead market confined to renewable electricity, and a regional market in carbon credits.

The Pool's own framing is that these sessions test readiness and preference across short, medium and long horizons rather than present settled findings, and that newer actors sit alongside existing members in the room. The implication is that nothing here is yet a product on which cross-border electricity trade can be contracted, and that the design which emerges will reflect who turned up to comment.

For large power users, the value of this is positional rather than commercial: the terms on which transmission rights might be resold, and on which price risk might be hedged, are being drafted now rather than negotiated later. It is worth checking whether your supply agreement or power purchase agreement assumes transmission rights that cannot be traded, and whether anyone in your business is placed to put that question while comment is still being taken. If wheeling across a border is part of your supply plan, the capacity resale product is the one to follow.