Author Archive for: Engineering News

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says the restructuring under way at South Africa’s troubled State-owned electricity producer will result in a new-look entity that “will no longer be the old Eskom as we know it” by the end of March next year. Delivering his Budget Vote to lawmakers, Gordhan said the National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTC) would be fully operationalised by November and that the identities of its independent board members would be announced “shortly”.

Telecommunications giant MTN South Africa (SA) has issued two requests for information (RFI’s) for zero carbon renewable wheeling and on-site renewable solutions for various data centres and base transceiver station (BTS) sites across South Africa as the operator works to unlock off-grid, clean and reliable energy alternatives. This as MTN SA aims to gain an edge through renewable energy solutions across its footprint and meet its 2040 Net Zero targets.

It is critical that government consolidates around the National Electricity Crisis Committee (Necom) plan and delivers on the implementation timelines as they stand now. “Given that there is 3 GW less generation available than during the past winter, it seems certain that South Africa is heading for Stage 8 loadshedding this winter. Business is an eager partner of the plan, ready to work where appropriate to ensure the goals are met, and a sense of progress is the one comfort we should have during the dark days ahead,” says business lobby organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso.

Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy reports that the department’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) section is currently processing applications for renewable-energy projects with a combined capacity of 9 789 MW. Delivering her Budget Vote on May 19, the Minister said that there were application for 2 899 MW of solar photovoltaic capacity and a further 6 890 MW of wind capacity and added that many of the applications were coupled with battery energy storage systems and associated transmission and distribution infrastructure.

It was “inevitable” that South Africa would have to use powerships to help deal with the country’s power supply crisis, Electricity Minister (in the Presidency) Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told delegates in his closing keynote address at the Enlit Africa conference in Cape Town in Thursday afternoon. Loadshedding – scheduled rotating power cuts imposed by State-owned national electricity utility Eskom – was, he said, “the single most important challenge facing us”. Powerships are basically power stations mounted on the hulls of ships, which can be sailed around the world to where they are needed, securely moored, linked to the local grid, generate power and feed it into that grid. He stressed that he was not referring to a specific company that operated such vessels but to the option that powerships provided.