The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) has confirmed September 22 as the new bid submission deadline for Bid Window Six (BW6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme following its expansion from 2 600 MW to 5 200 MW. Prior to the doubling of the size of the round as part of a package of interventions announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on July 25, the BW6 closing date had been set as 17:00 on August 11.
Eskom is implementing Stage 2 load-shedding from 16:00 to 24:00 on Wednesday and Thursday. “The delay in returning a generation unit to service each at Arnot, Koeberg and the Kusile power stations, as well as the unplanned outage of a generation unit each at Camden, Medupi and two units each at Grootvlei, Hendrina and Majuba power stations, have exacerbated the capacity constraints,” Eskom said.
Eskom warned on Tuesday that Stage 2 load-shedding might be implemented at short notice between 16:00 and 24:00 over the next three days. This is due to a delay in returning a generation unit to service each at Arnot, Kusile and the Koeberg power stations, as well as the failure of a generation unit each at Medupi, Hendrina, Camden, and two units at Majuba.
An Africa-focused hydro-power startup has teamed up with a Californian maker of ‘fish-safe’ turbines in a bid to solve electricity supply problems in the Democratic Republic of Congo. MyHydro has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Congolese government to develop 36 small hydro projects in a country where only about 10% of its 100-million people have access to electricity. The plants will use turbines made by Natel Energy, which have blunted blades that leave almost all the fish that pass through the turbines unharmed.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan reports that Eskom will seek the exemptions it requires to immediately buy up to 1 600 MW of surplus electricity generation that it believes could be available immediately from existing independent power producers (IPPs) and those private South African businesses with their own generation capacity. He also announced that a further 100 MW to 200 MW could be purchased in the short-term from Botswana and Zambia through the Southern African Power Pool, while a further 150 MW of gas-fired electricity could be purchased from Mozambique.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe reported that the bid submission deadline for Bid Window Six (BW6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme would be delayed by between 45 and 60 days to ensure procedural fairness in light of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that the size of the round would be doubled from 2 600 MW to 5 200 MW. The bid submission date for BW 6 was initially set down for August 11, after the request for proposals (RFP) documentation was published on April 6.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa will visit Mozambique and Zambia in a bid to save the country’s electricity import contracts that are being eyed by Eskom. Mnangagwa’s trips come at a time when South Africa, which is undergoing an electricity crisis, seeks to replace Zimbabwe as an importer of electricity from Mozambique and Zambia.
Renewable energy company EIMS Africa has successfully acquired Renewable Energy Empowerment Management Services (Reesco) – a key step in the company’s expansion plans as it anticipates increasing its generation capacity to about 1 500 MW by late 2022.
EIMS Africa’s current renewable energy portfolio comprises 13 utility-scale projects with a combined generation capacity of over 850 MW, including the 50 MW De Wildt solar farm in the North West province.
Africa deserves the highest priority attention at the upcoming twenty-seventh United Nations’ climate conference – the Conference of the Parties 27 (COP 27), to be held in Egypt, in November, panel members said in a discussion of the the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) African Economic Outlook 2022 report during an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on July 27.
A team from the AfDB, led by acting chief economist and VP Kevin Urama, is in Washington DC, in the US, to present the African Economic Outlook 2022 – a flagship publication of the bank – to international thought leaders and other targeted bodies.
State-owned utility Eskom met with CEOs and leadership from over 70 private institutions in a session led by the JSE and business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) on July 29, as part of ongoing efforts to resolve the long-running electricity crisis. “The purpose of the discussions was to identify initiatives where the parties can collaborate and plant the seeds of opportunity to leverage private sector investment capacity and harvest the low hanging fruit in the electricity industry,” group CE André de Ruyter said.
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