African manufacturers have a significant role to play in helping to remedy the continent’s energy crises by developing innovative solutions for energy storage and access. By creating products tailored to the needs of the African context, manufacturers can help reduce energy poverty, increase energy efficiency and spur economic growth. However, this depends on whether the right environment is created to help manufacturers expand operations and pursue cross-border investment opportunities, electromechanical equipment manufacturer Actom Group CEO and Manufacturing Circle chairperson Mervyn Naidoo says.
The Presidency has moved to outline the criteria that will be used before any decision is made to delay the decommissioning of certain coal-fired power stations to take account of the prevailing supply deficit and has also dismissed suggestions that there is any plan to extend the life of the stations. Addressing the Presidential Planning Commission (PCC) on June 9, project management office head Rudi Dicks acknowledged that the decision to potentially revise the schedule had raised questions both domestically and with the International Partners Group that had agreed to provide $8.5-billion-worth of concessional finding to support South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP).
The City of Cape Town aims to reduce the turnaround time of applications for small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) systems by allocating more resources to deal with the applications, switching to an online application system and simplifying the customer experience. With the big uptake in solar photovoltaic (PV) and batteries owing to loadshedding, there has also been an increase in fly-by-night operators. Many of these systems are not wired correctly or are inferior, contributing to the extended power outages the city is experiencing following load-shedding. The city wants to ensure customers are not negatively impacted, it said in a statement.
Stage 3 loadshedding will be implemented from 16:00 until midnight on Friday, as per previous notices, Eskom said in a statement. But after that, Stage 1 loadshedding will kick in from 05:00 until 16:00 on Saturday, followed by Stage 4 until midnight.
Global innovative and sustainable building solutions developer Holcim tested an all-electric concrete mixer truck last month. The eMixer was officially presented to the industry at international trade fair bauma 2022, which was held at Neue Messe München in Germany.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has announced that 15 commercial electricity suppliers will start wheeling electricity through Cape Town’s grid in July. The city’s Mayoral Committee has greenlit the project that will allow third parties to sell electricity using Cape Town’s grid infrastructure, as part of a long-term project to reduce the impact of Eskom loadshedding.
CEOs from some of South Africa’s largest companies – including Sasol’s Fleetwood Grobler, Anglo American’s Nolitha Fakude, former Exxaro CEO Mxolisi Mgojo, Toyota South Africa’s Andrew Kirby, Remgro’s Jannie Durand, Sibanye-Stillwater’s Neal Froneman and Sanlam’s Paul Hanratty – have agreed to lead workstreams set up to support government in tackling the country’s prevailing crises in the energy and transport sectors, as well as debilitating levels of crime and corruption. Following a meeting between organised business and government on June 6, an agreement was reached to form a partnership to tackle the three issues, which have emerged as major obstacles to growth, development and job creation.
A new survey of South Africa’s renewable-energy development pipeline, and its potential implications for grid planning and investment, reveals that there is currently a 66 GW pipeline of wind and solar projects in South Africa and that a number of these projects are envisaged to be coupled with battery storage. The pipeline also includes some 2 GW of gas-to-power. The ‘Renewable Energy Grid Survey’, which has been compiled by Eskom in collaboration with the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA) and the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) indicates that about 18.3 GW is at an advanced stage of development.
Loadshedding will be suspended from midnight to 16:00 every day until further notice, with Stage 3 implemented over the evening peak, due to “further improvement on the available generation capacity”. The Stage 3 load shedding will last from 16:00 until midnight.
The journey by South Africa’s Pele Energy Group (PEG) from fledgling energy investor to that of a pioneering black-owned and -managed independent power producer (IPP) is receiving fresh impetus from an unexpected source: the robust private-offtake market that has been stimulated by a recent reform allowing for distributed generation projects of any size to proceed without a licence. MD Gqi Raoleka reports that the company has steadily expanded its portfolio from 800 MW in 2016 – when Engineering News ran a feature on how the five young black professionals who founded PEG had aspirations to become a fully-fledged IPP – to approximately 2 000 MW currently.
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