African Development Bank (AfDB) managed fund, the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (Sefa), has approved a $1-million grant for the modernisation of Africa’s aging hydropower fleet. The grant will fund the mapping and evaluation of African hydropower facilities’ rehabilitation needs.
A new web-based platform, which will showcase green stimulus projects across Africa, has been officially launched. The portal, which can be found at http://agsp.nepad.org/, was unveiled this week by South Africa’s Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy in her capacity as outgoing president of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN).
With South African retailers looking for ways of recovering from the latest lockdown, as well as the looting and vandalism, an opportunity to decrease costs on the system that comprises the bulk of their energy spend, which is refrigeration, has arisen. “All food retailers rely on refrigeration and are compelled to spend a lot of time, money and finite resources on managing these systems in-house. However, new, ground-breaking technology and the emergence of a pay-per-service model for clean cooling are changing the status quo,” says local refrigeration manufacturer EP Refrigeration business development head Dawie Kriel.
A global increase in demand for South African-grown citrus, as well as more export regulations, has resulted in a substantial increase in demand for refrigeration capacity, says local refrigeration manufacturer EP Refrigeration business development head Dawie Kriel. “We not only need to add refrigerated storage space but also improve refrigerated transport capacity,” he tells Engineering News.
Software solutions provider ABB Electrification has experienced high demand from the local market for energy-efficient systems related to integrating automation into electrical and mechanical systems, particularly in terms of retrofitting these products into older buildings. “These energy-efficient systems have been around for many years, but until last year, they were pushed aside locally as they were often too expensive. Going forward, energy-efficient systems can be a lot more easily adopted,” explains ABB Electrification product marketing specialist Yuri Ramsamy.
Last month, South African Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors Association (Saracca) released its updated training manual, which will be implemented, from this month onwards, by heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC-R) training providers throughout South Africa. Saracca director Barney Richardson tells Engineering News that the new manual is part of the association’s continuous efforts to maintain skills levels in the HVAC-R sector.
South African energy company Apollo Africa has announced a partnership with global energy technology company WePower, as well as the development of its Apollo Platform, subject to normal regulatory approvals. The partnership aims to accelerate the energy transition in the Southern African renewable energy market.
NYSE-listed GE Renewable Energy, research institute Fraunhofer IGCV and 3D printing systems manufacturer voxeljet have entered into a research partnership aimed at developing the world’s largest three-dimensional (3D) printer for offshore wind applications in order to streamline the production of key components of GE’s Haliade-X offshore wind turbine. The partners expect to launch the project during the third quarter of this year, with initial printer trials to start in the first quarter of 2022.
A group of global leaders from across the renewable energy value chain and the sector’s innovation ecosystem on September 16 launched a new organisation aimed at ensuring renewables are wholly sustainable for people and the planet and lead a just transition away from fossil fuels. The partners, united in a shared vision for the sustainability of the renewables industry and the need to take concrete, collaborative action, have come together to create the Global Alliance for Sustainable Energy.
Zimbabwe asked Mozambique and Zambia to supply it with more electricity as it tries to fill a power shortfall that’s led to outages of 12 hours a day. “We are in discussions with Mozambique for the recently commissioned power plants to give us an additional 180 MW,” Energy Minister Soda Zhemu told lawmakers Wednesday, according to a transcript on parliament’s website. “We are also at final stage of discussion with Zambia to get an additional 100 MW”.
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