Author Archive for: Engineering News

The annual Windaba Conference and Exhibition 2021, will take place on October 7 and 8 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre as part of celebrating the wind industry’s being operational in South Africa for ten years, says South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA) chairperson Mercia Grimbeek. “Windaba is the flagship event for SAWEA, and we are fortunate enough to have a physical conference again. We’re celebrating ten years of SAWEA’s existence, the roll-out of megawatts of wind energy that we have achieved and the roll-out of wind energy that we intend to achieve in the next ten years.”

Crowd-based solar leasing platform Sun Exchange has secured $2.5-million in convertible note financing from Mauritian private equity fund ARPF, which is advised by London-based ARCH Emerging Markets Partners (ARCH). This follows the company’s close of a $4-million Series A funding round in 2020, led by a $3-million investment from ARCH.

South Africa’s energy minister encouraged investment in technology that could potentially prolong the use of coal by mitigating emissions while a visiting delegation of rich nations were working on a plan to end the nation’s dependence on the fossil fuel. The call by Mineral and Energy Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe at a mining investment conference comes as envoys from the US, UK, Germany, France and the European Union meet with South African ministers, labour and business leaders around a $5-billion fund to reduce the country’s dependence on coal.

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) ‘Achievements of Energy Efficiency Appliance and Equipment Standards and Labelling Programmes’ report states that labelling electrical equipment according to energy performance helps consumers make informed buying decisions, leading to billions of dollars of savings on electricity and avoiding 300-million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. “This is exciting news for South Africa, as the study echoes the experience that we have had with our local Energy Efficiency Standards and Labelling (EES&L) programmes,” says South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) energy efficiency & corporate communications GM Barry Bredenkamp.

The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) on Wednesday announced its support of the recent National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) decision to approve the Section 34 (of the Electricity Regulation Act) Determination for 2 500 MW of new nuclear energy. Necsa described this approval by Nersa as “a step in the right direction”, to ensure that nuclear energy would continue to be part of the country’s energy mix (in line with the Integrated Resource Plan 2020). “The approval of the 2 500 MW comes at a critical time when the South Africa economy needs resuscitation following the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic,” affirmed Necsa board chairperson Dave Nicholls. “This will play a role in job creation which will assist in the dire state of unemployment in the country.”