Author Archive for: Engineering News

South Africa’s State-owned power utility Eskom said it’s in talks with government ministries over private and foreign options to fund a R390-billion expansion of its transmission network as more renewable generation comes online. Eskom supplies more than 80% of electricity to the continent’s most industrialised nation and has failed to meet demand, resulting in blackouts that have crippled the economy. The utility also owns, manages and maintains the transmission system and plans to build 14 218 kilometers of power lines over the next decade, more than three times what it has installed over the past 10 years.

Selecting a generator set with a standby power rating might have been sufficient ten to 15 years ago but is no longer a viable option to cope with the current severity of local power disruptions owing to South Africa’s energy crisis, says generator manufacturer WEG Africa senior gensets manager Craig Bouwer. WEG Africa operates a generator manufacturing facility in Cape Town, which supplies standard off-the-shelf generator sets as well as custom-built, application-specific units, with capacities ranging from 10 kVA to 3 350 kVA at 50 Hz.

Contractual negotiations are under way between the developers of the HySHiFT sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) project, in Mpumalanga, and the intermediary company set up under Germany’s H2Global scheme, known as Hintco, which enters into long-term purchase contracts for clean hydrogen and derivatives such as ammonia, methanol, and SAF. Speaking at Resources for Africa’s 2024 Hydrogen Discussion in Johannesburg Enertrag business case development manager Jonathan Metcalfe reported that the project, which is being developed by Sasol, Linde, Enertrag and Hydregen, had been selected as a preferred bidder and that the negotiations for a ten-year offtake deal could be concluded by mid-2024.

The world’s coal-fired power capacity grew 2% last year, its highest annual increase since 2016, driven by new builds in China and decommissioning delays elsewhere, according to research published on Thursday. Despite record renewable additions, nearly 70 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity were commissioned across the world last year, including 47.4 GW in China, the U.S.-based Global Energy Monitor think tank said in its annual survey. Coal-fired capacity outside China also grew for the first time since 2019, while worldwide only 21.1 GW was shut down, the survey said.