Floating gas-to-power specialist Karpowership South Africa (KPS SA) has showcased a Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) ship, in Cape Town, before it ventures on to its final destination in Rio de Janeiro. KPS SA plans on docking three of these vessels – one each at Richards Bay, Saldanha Bay and Coega – to generate a combined 1.2 GW of power for South Africa’s grid for a 20-year period.
There is a low likelihood of a total blackout, or collapse of the power system, Eskom said on Wednesday. The power utility provided a system update as Stage 4 load shedding persists.
Load-shedding will be reduced from Stage 4 to Stage 3 at 22:00, and remain in force until Friday, Eskom announced on Wednesday. Six generation units have been returned online over the past 24 hours, with three more units set to return on Thursday.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) says it is unaware of Eskom’s ‘standard offer’ instrument, through which the utility claims it could potentially secure an immediate 500 MW from private generators with surplus electricity. Eskom CEO André de Ruyter listed the standard offer among several short-term interventions that should be enabled immediately to ease pressure on the country’s load-shedding prone grid.
Rolls-Royce SMR, the UK-based global power and propulsion system manufacturing group Rolls-Royce’s small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) subsidiary, hopes that it will receive UK regulatory approval for its design in about two years, and be generating power before the end of this decade. So Rolls-Royce SMR chairperson Paul Stein has told the Reuters news agency. The regulatory approval process for the SMR began last month. “[It] will likely complete in the middle of 2024,” he said, “we are trying to work with the UK Government, and others to get going now placing orders, so that we can get power on grid by 2029.”
Siemens Gamesa is discussing raising prices for its wind turbines by more than a high single-digit percentage in some cases as it grapples with stubbornly lofty raw materials prices, CE Jochen Eickholt said on Wednesday. “For specific materials … steel, copper, others, we continue to observe further non-decreasing prices so the price peak we kind of reached is kind of still in existence,” Eickholt told analysts on a conference call after posting a quarterly loss. Read full story
The Saldanha Bay region has “excellent” solar and wind resources that have the potential for large renewable energy electricity at competitive costs, making it an ideal location to produce green hydrogen – hydrogen made using renewable energy as a source of electricity – Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) senior research engineer Thomas Roos highlighted during a recent event. In a keynote address at the second Energy Transition webinar, on April 12, hosted by the Saldanha Bay Innovation Campus (SB-IC), he said that, although electricity was a contested space in South Africa, the potential for green hydrogen production “far exceeds” local demand.
Climate change adaptation and green economy nonprofit GreenCape has selected ten finalists for the 2022 GreenPitch Challenge. The ten green economy innovators will prepare to pitch their innovations to a panel of judges on May 5, at an event hosted by GreenCape in partnership with the City of Cape Town’s Invest Cape Town and The Business Hub.
JSE-listed real estate investment trust Vukile Property Fund has concluded a five-year, R200-million use-of-proceeds green loan with financial services firm Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking, which will fund 19 solar energy projects and energy-efficiency initiatives across South Africa. The loan will fund seven recently installed solar energy projects of R60-million.
There can be as many as 101 days of load-shedding this winter, in the “extreme case”, according to an Eskom official. Eskom on Tuesday provided an update on the state of the power system, this after load-shedding escalated to Stage 4 in the morning due to failing generating units.
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