Johannesburg could turn around the lossmaking performance of City Power, end load-shedding and improve the green credentials of its manufacturing industry by purchasing 80% of its wholesale electricity from large-scale, citizen-owned solar and wind plants at a cost below that purchased from Eskom currently. This is the view of Clyde Mallinson, an energy specialist who has conducted extensive modelling on a future domestic electricity supply industry based exclusively on solar, wind and storage.
As the country once again contends with continued load-shedding, the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA) has reaffirmed the sector’s role in contributing to energy security. This is despite the recent announcement of delays to two renewable energy procurement rounds meant to unlock and deliver new generation capacity, SAWEA says.
The reasons for South Africa’s energy crisis are well known and include the State ignoring the warnings that electricity generation was falling short, maintenance was not being undertaken, the grid having deteriorated to the point of near collapse and corruption being allowed to continue unbated, industry organisation the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) COO Tafadzwa Chibanguza states. He says that, what is needed now, is focus on what can be done to finally begin addressing the problem.
Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy reports that she has written to provincial environment MECs to enquire whether they require any assistance in processing environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for embedded-generation projects that could help relieve pressure on the country’s load-shedding-prone grid. Speaking ahead of her department’s Budget Vote, Creecy said her letter outlined the urgency of the projects, which are being pursued by miners and other energy intensive businesses in line with a recent market reform allowing sub-100 MW projects to proceed without a licence.
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter has revealed that the utility is compiling a “consolidated proposal” on how to end the ongoing electricity crisis, including how to introduce much-needed new generation capacity in the shortest possible time. The State-owned utility estimates the current shortfall to be between 4 000 MW and 6 000 MW and has argued that, unless addressed, Eskom will continue to have limited headroom to address serious maintenance backlogs across its breakdown-prone coal fleet.
Energy company Kibo Energy has signed a rolling five-year agreement with energy storage company Enerox’s subsidiary CellCube to develop and deploy CellCube-based long-duration energy storage (LDES) solutions in selected sectors in Southern Africa. Kibo has been granted conditional exclusive rights, subject to successful proof of concepts, to the marketing, sales, configuration and delivery of CellCube’s vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) in the development of its LDES solutions in microgrid applications behind the electricity meter.
South Africa is still currently on track for Stage 3 load-shedding between 17:00 and 22:00 on Tuesday as a lack of capacity has left the country with evening power cuts for the rest of the week. Eskom had initially said there would Stage 3 load-shedding on Monday night as well, but had to escalate to Stage 4 after a unit tripped at Kusile power station, taking 720MW of generating capacity with it.
States that do not have nuclear weapons, which include most developing countries, have an opportunity to demand greater access to nuclear sciences and technologies for peaceful purposes, including for energy, industry and medicine, at the tenth review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), scheduled for August, Ambassador of Norway to Southern Africa Stian Nordengen Christensen has pointed out. Non-nuclear weapon armed States, and African States in particular, aim to focus on peaceful uses of nuclear energy at the upcoming review conference and they have the full support of Norway, he said during a discussion hosted by the South African Institute of International Affairs on May 13.
The head of South Africa’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) Office believes that improved stakeholder management and alignment are key to overcoming delays to the introduction of urgently required new electricity capacity and to creating the predictable “procurement rhythm” required to attract electricity and manufacturing investment. In a wide-ranging interview Bernard Magoro tells Engineering News that all stakeholders, including multiple government departments, the regulator, Eskom and the bidders, need to “come to the party” to overcome the current impediments to projects achieving financial close.
State-owned utility Eskom was forced to implement Stage 4 load-shedding on the evening of May 16 after Unit 2 at the Kusile power station tripped, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said. The tripped Kusile unit removed 720 MW of generating capacity from the already constrained grid.
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