Author Archive for: Engineering News

South Africa’s energy regulator apologised for a R54-billion error in calculating electricity tariffs, a mistake that will be passed on to consumers. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa, which determines what State power utility Eskom can charge for electricity, announced the miscalculation last month, without providing further details.

Amid a global emphasis on a just energy transition to help mitigate the impacts of climate change, issues such as exclusion and inequality should be addressed to ensure the transition is equitable. During the fifth instalment of the Standard Bank Climate Summit, held on September 9, Standard Bank Group CEO Sim Tshabalala argued that, in the context of climate policy, exclusion and inequality slow down the transition in the Global South and create intense and effective resistance to transition in the developed world.

Ethiopia officially inaugurates Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on Tuesday, a project that will provide energy to millions of Ethiopians while deepening a rift with downstream Egypt that has unsettled the region. Ethiopia, the continent’s second most populous nation with a population of 120 million, sees the $5-billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on a tributary of the River Nile as central to its ambitions for economic development.

State-owned power utility Eskom has identified a set of roles it could and should operate in to support the transition of the electricity environment to include more sustainably-generated electricity. Specifically, Eskom chairperson Dr Mteto Nyati, during a briefing on September 5, said that utility would participate in the renewable energy generation space and aimed to “be assertive, as this is a space we feel we should be able to occupy”.

Although the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) faces a series of significant obstacles – such as insufficient transmission infrastructure; drought conditions affecting hydropower plants; theft and vandalism; high technical and non-technical losses; funding gaps; and a 4 200 MW generation shortfall across interconnected member States – South Africa’s Deputy Electricity and Energy Minister Samantha Jane Graham-Maré has said these are surmountable with the right kind of cooperation and funding. “These are not small issues. They affect our economies, our communities and our ability for our industries to grow. But here’s the good news: these challenges are not insurmountable. Think about it this way: if every country tries to build everything on its own, we spend more and we waste more.