The Vergelegen wine estate, in Somerset West, has installed a solar power plant that has taken it completely off the grid. The plant includes six solar tables, comprising 500 panels that cover 1 400 m², three inverters and a 1 MWh battery. This will ensure the cellar can run on the battery during harvesting, even if there is no sun, the company says.
The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) has formally requested Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to change its mandate, to allow it to become involved in the generation of electricity from nuclear energy. So Necsa CEO Loyiso Tyabashe has told Engineering News in an exclusive interview. Currently, only the State-owned national electricity utility Eskom is permitted to operate nuclear power plants (NPPs). The country has only one NPP, at Koeberg, north of Cape Town. Under South Africa’s current Integrated Resources Plan (IRP), the country is seeking to create 2 500 MW of new nuclear power generating capacity (although no nuclear capacity would come on stream for at least ten years after authorisation was granted). Necsa would like some of that allocation to be assigned to it.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has criticised Eskom’s “elongated” restructuring timeframes and has called for greater urgency and drive from the utility in completing the remaining processes required to enable the independent grid company to begin trading. Eskom has indicated that the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), the first of three subsidiaries under the yet-to-be-formed Eskom Holdings scheduled to be operationalised, will begin trading from the start of its new financial year on April 1.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) still has difficulty securing investments for its Inga power project, the president said on Tuesday in New York, adding that the World Bank and China are interested. The multibillion-dollar project, which will harness the power of the Congo River, has been repeatedly delayed by red tape and disagreements between Congo and its partners.
The Drakenstein municipality, in the Western Cape, has adopted Schneider Electric’s green RM AirSeT switchgear, which it says will reduce the municipality’s carbon footprint by using pure air instead of SF6 gas. The project alleviates the harmful greenhouse gas emissions produced by SF6 gas (sulphur hexafluoride) found in traditional gas-insulated switchgear, which is 23 500 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Eskom expects the remaining suspensive conditions required for the operationalisation of the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA) to be met by the end of its current financial year and for the entity to commence trading from the start of the new financial year, which begins on April 1. Commenting on the decision of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to approved, on September 14, the two additional licence applications required for the independent operation of the NTCSA, Eskom said the approvals marked “a significant milestone in the legal separation process of the Transmission Division”.
Around R300-million is spent annually on salaries for staff and maintenance at the Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations, which have not been operational for more than a decade. On Monday, Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink addressed the media on the City’s plan to procure and generate at least 1 000 megawatts of power independent of the state-run power producer, Eskom.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has approved the two licence applications required for the operationalisation of the National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA), which is in the process of being established as an independent unbundled division of Eskom Holdings. The approvals of the trading, as well as the import and export licences were made by the Energy Regulator, Nersa’s highest decision-making body, at a special meeting held on September 14.
Eskom has confirmed that problems in the diesel supply chain last week meant that it did not operate its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) as “hard” as it would have done normally in a context where the utility was resorting to Stage 6 loadshedding. Head of generation Bheki Nxumalo did not offer any details on the nature of the supply-chain problems during a weekly update on the Energy Action Plan.
Engineering News editor Terence Creamer discusses the various grid-related funding proposals and delivery mechanisms being considered by South Africa and what this could mean for adding much-needed electricity supply.
INDUSTRY NEWS
- DMRE to push for Cabinet approval of new-look IRP by end-March despite big revisionsNovember 26, 2024 - 6:04 pm
- NTCSA appoints EPC suppliers for transmission substationsNovember 25, 2024 - 5:05 pm
- Eskom finalises technical breakthrough enabling it to extend deadline for meter conversionsNovember 25, 2024 - 1:04 pm
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