Author Archive for: Engineering News

South Africa’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) Office reported on Tuesday that more than 60 respondents had signalled their intention, by the October 31 deadline for doing so, to participate in the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP), through which government is aiming to procure 2 000 MW of so-called ‘emergency power’. IPP Office CEO Tshifhiwa Bernard Magoro told participants to a virtual panel discussion held as part of the third South Africa Investment Conference that there had been a high degree of interest in the “technology agnostic” programme, criticised by some commentators as including criteria that made it difficult for renewables and battery solutions to submit competitive bids.

State-owned power utility Eskom expects to complete its socioeconomic impact studies by the end of March for the planned shutdown of the Grootvlei, Komati and Hendrina power stations, in Mpumalanga, which are the first of ten coal plants scheduled for decommissioning by 2040. The decommissioning of the three power stations is anticipated to take place over the coming five years and Eskom has initiated a process to assess the potential for ‘repowering’ some of the stations using alternative generation technologies, including renewables, gas, biomass, battery storage and hydrogen.

A total of 29 South African municipalities have already approved tariff frameworks for small-scale embedded generation (SSEG), with 282 MW of mostly rooftop solar capacity having be formally integrated into municipal networks, the South African Local Government Association (Salga) reports. The actual figure is likely to be significantly larger, but many SSEG facilities have not been registered with either a municipality of the regulator.

In this opinion piece, Wärtsilä South African business development manager Wayne Glossop writes about the benefits of converting old coal-fired power plants to modern gas engine power plants. AGL Energy Limited undertook a successful transformation of an old coal plant to a modern flexible gas engine power plant to support more renewables into the South Australian power system

Eskom Holdings, South Africa’s state power utility, was ordered to comply with pollution limits at three of its coal-fired plants this year while two more are being investigated, the government’s environment department said in its first disclosure about most of the orders. The violations listed in the National Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Report 2019-20 include excessive emissions of particulate matter and groundwater pollution. The violations and orders are as follows: