President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled several far-reaching interventions – including a doubling in the allocation for the next renewables procurement round, the scrapping of the 100 MW licence-exemption threshold for distributed generators and a proposal of a feed-in tariff for self-generating households and businesses – as part of a much-anticipated action plan for ending load-shedding. While refraining from declaring the “national crisis” a state of disaster as sought by some opposition parties, the President also announced that “special legislation” would be placed before Parliament to address remaining legal and regulatory obstacles to the urgent introduction of new capacity.
British International Investment (BII) has hired Rothschild & Co to review options for how to grow Globeleq, an operator of African power plants, according to people familiar with the matter. The UK’s development finance institution, formerly known as CDC, owns 70% of Globeleq and is considering bringing in a new investor to join existing minority shareholder Norfund, the people said.
South Africa plans to try and resolve its chronic power shortage by making it easier for private companies to build plants and paying households and businesses to produce electricity from solar panels. The urgent need to fix the country’s 14-year electricity crisis has been laid bare by five weeks of power outages that ended last week, the worst since the near-collapse of the grid in 2008. President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress have been heavily criticized over their inability to resolve the problem, despite repeated promises to do so.
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has announced its plans to fund an upcoming hybrid solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery storage facility in the Northern Cape, which is poised to be one of the world’s largest projects of this nature.
The IDC is participating in the project through its funding support to a black economic empowerment group called H1 to acquire a 49% equity in this venture, alongside Norwegian renewable energy manufacturer Scatec.
Rumours of a special new R938 levy to be imposed on electricity consumers that have installed a solar system are misleading, says solar power and battery back-up solutions provider Alumo Energy MD Rein Henkemans.
He says there is no proposed special levy for solar users, but instead, Eskom has applied to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa for a new tariff structure for all homeowners that would include a fixed cost and variable cost.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) of Japan has given formal approval to the plan of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to discharge into the sea treated water from the disabled and deactivated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP). The operational reactors at the plant had been wrecked by the devastating tsunami which hit north-eastern Japan, following a massive undersea earthquake, in 2011. Following the consequent meltdowns of the three reactors, water was used to cool the melted nuclear fuel. That, and other contaminated water, has been stored in a tank farm, containing some 1 000 tanks, constructed on the NPP site. The water is being treated, using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS). This removes all the radioactive contamination, except for tritium (which is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen).
Development finance institution the International Finance Corporation (IFC) provided record financing of $9.4-billion in investments between July 2021 and June this year across 36 countries in Africa, helping to develop regional pharmaceutical manufacturing, increase intra-Africa trade, expand access to climate financing and strengthen food security. The investments include $3-billion in trade financing that is unlocking intra-Africa trade for thousands of small businesses; $2.1-billion that is supporting the continent’s green transition, from increasing access to climate finance to funding renewable energy projects; and $861.7-million that is supporting increased digital connectivity.
After load-shedding was suspended for the first time in five weeks this weekend, Eskom warned that it may return at short notice on Monday. During the early hours of Monday morning, there were two electrical faults in quick succession in the high voltage yard at Kriel power station.
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