The world’s least developed countries rely on external sources for almost three-quarters of their energy investment but may pay up to seven times more than developed countries to access international capital markets, which is a major impediment to ramping up investments in renewables, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres says. With the release of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (Unctad’s) ‘World Investment Report 2023’, on July 5, he has called for a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) stimulus, among other things, to increase long-term and affordable financing for developing countries “to enable them to invest at scale in the transition to renewable energy”.
Water outages in Johannesburg and Tshwane are a result of loadshedding, says Teboho Joala, Rand Water’s chief shared services officer and acting managing director. On Sunday, the municipalities warned residents there were still issues in some areas because of power outages which hit Rand Water in June
A new and updated edition of the loadshedding code of practice, which includes up to 16 stages of loadshedding, has been finalised by and expert group and delivered to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) for approval. The current NRS 048-9 edition, known as Edition 2, has protocols governing up to eight stages of loadshedding, which would involve rotational cuts of up to 16 hours in a 32-hour cycle. Edition 3 has increased the number of stages to 16, with the highest stage involving 24 hours of loadshedding in a 32-hour cycle.
Power utility Eskom will implement Stage 1 loadshedding from 05:00 to 16:00 and Stage 3 loadshedding from 16:00 to midnight on Wednesday and Thursday. Stage 3 loadshedding will also be implemented from 16:00 to midnight on Tuesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a specialist agency of the United Nations, announced on Tuesday that Japan’s plan to release treated water, currently stored at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP), into the sea, was consistent with the IAEA Safety Standards. The Fukushima Daiichi NPP, owned and operated by Tokyo Power Company (Tepco), was wrecked by the tsunami triggered by the massive Tōhoku earthquake in March 2011. The earthquake knocked out the primary cooling systems for the NPP, and the tsunami disabled the backup cooling systems for three of the NPP’s reactors, causing them, despite being in shutdown mode, to overheat and suffer meltdowns. The reactors had to be cooled by pumping water into them, which contaminated the water, which was then collected and stored in a rapidly-constructed tank farm at the NPP.
South Africa’s energy crisis may have reduced the nation’s economic growth rate by as much as 3.2 percentage points last year and is likely to dampen output until at least early 2024, according to the central bank. Eskom frequently implements loadshedding to protect the grid from collapse as the State-owned utility’s aging and poorly maintained plants can’t meet demand. Regular outages since January have lasted as long as 12 hours a day.
Consider a large solar photovoltaic (PV) plant with 300 000 PV modules or panels as they are commonly called. How do you know whether they meet the quality or power output standards specified by the manufacturer? You will need to test 300 to 500 of them on a plant of this size, preferably before installation or on site if they are already installed. With solar PV being one of South Africa’s fastest growing industries, it is essential to independently test the quality, performance and durability of a sample of modules at every plant. The size of the sample is determined by the size of the plant according to specific standards.
Eskom recently announced that it will be starting a national rollout to update the 6.6-million prepaid electricity meters under its control before they become non-operational on 24 November 2024. The utility has known about the issue for more than 10 years, according to Don Taylor, the inventor of the first prepaid electricity meter, who is heading up the rollover project for the Standard Transfer Specification Association (STSA).
Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa argues that South Africa should give urgent attention to the strengthening and expansion of the transmission grid to avoid any further extension of the prevailing loadshedding crisis, which he says has its genesis largely in the failure of government to respond timeously to the need to add new generation capacity. “We can’t kick the can down the road in a similar manner as we did with generation,” Ramokgopa said of transmission grid investment during his weekly briefing on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.
Stage 3 loadshedding will be implemented from 16:00 on Friday until midnight. After that, it will be suspended until 16:00 on Saturday. Stage 3 loadshedding will then be implemented again over the evening peak from 16:00 until midnight. This pattern will be repeated until further notice, Eskom said. Breakdowns have reduced to 14 374 MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance has been boosted to 5 003 MW.
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