Renewable power is on course to shatter more records, as countries around the world speed up deployment. With the global energy crisis as a catalyst, solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind are set to lead the largest yearly increase in new renewable capacity ever, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) ‘Renewable Energy Market Update’ report shows. Global additions of renewable power capacity are expected to jump by one-third this year as growing policy momentum, higher fossil fuel prices and energy security concerns drive strong deployment of solar PV and wind power.
Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa confirmed with lawmakers this week that government intends pushing ahead with the procurement of electricity from powerships, amid ongoing environmental opposition to the floating gas-to-power plants and significant concerns over the cost implications and the term of the contracts. “We are, as the Ministry, now going to commence with an emergency procurement programme based on powership solutions to give us an additional 2 000 MW and this amounts to two stages of loadshedding,” Ramokgopa said in a speech delivered as part of the debate on the Presidency’s Budget Vote.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe is convinced that mining companies can supplement State-owned Eskom’s supply of electricity, and that this would be critical for narrowing the electricity supply and demand gap, thereby improving South Africa’s mining industry global ranking, which was in the bottom quartile on both investment attractiveness and policy perception indexes by research organisation Fraser Institute’s 2022 survey of mining companies. “A success story is registered in the performance of Gold Fields, which registered a 10% production growth despite the 9% decline year-on-year in the sectors’ overall production. This is because they completed their 50 MW plant, which is giving them enough energy and registered some surplus. Therefore, the industry’s investment in expanding its own electricity capacity to power its operations gives us hope,” Mantashe said at the Minerals Council South Africa’s 133rd annual general meeting, in Johannesburg, on May 31.
While warning of a difficult winter for electricity security, President Cyril Ramaphosa has again moved to highlight the success of a recent market reform that has enabled private distributed generation projects of any size to proceed without having to undertake an onerous licensing process. Addressing lawmakers during his Budget Vote, Ramaphosa said that the amendment to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act, which initially removed the licensing requirement for projects below 100 MW and was later adjusted to remove the threshold altogether, had stimulated significant investment activity.
A Gauteng-based solar PV supplier and installer has agreed to pay a R200 000 administrative penalty after being accused of collusion in public tenders. The Competition Commission, following an investigation, found that the firm, Pacific Solar, had colluded with another service provider Nert Technologies, in preparing and pricing their bids for tenders from the Council for Geoscience and The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE).
South Africa’s Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is having discussions with Karpowership about the potential for introducing the floating gas-to-power plants under a power purchase agreement (PPA) with terms of between five and ten years, instead of 20 years. In providing an update on the reforms being pursued under Operation Vulindlela, including various electricity reforms, project management unit head Rudi Dicks reported that powerships were not among the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP) projects expected to progress to financial close in the coming months.
Eskom’s Transmission Division, which will form part of the separated National Transmission Company South Africa once established later this year, will begin relying more heavily on the engineer, procure and construct (EPC) contracting model as it seeks to accelerate the pace at which transmission infrastructure is built in a context where the lack of grid has become a key impediment to the injection of new generation capacity. In an address to suppliers, MD Segomoco Scheppers reported that South Africa needed to add more than 1 500 km of new transmission lines yearly between now and 2032 to ensure that the infrastructure was in place to facilitate the addition of more than 50 GW of new generation capacity, mostly in the form of variable renewables, over the period.
The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has already initiated efforts, in collaboration with the Department of Health and State-owned utility Eskom, to identify 213 hospitals for exclusion from loadshedding to ensure that they have continuous power supply, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has said. Of the 213 hospitals, 76 have already been excluded from loadshedding, while work to exempt a further 46 is under way, he said in a May 29 media statement.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), at its May 25 meeting, concurred with the draft ministerial determination for the procurement of 344.5 MW of new generation capacity from solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage by State-owned Eskom. The regulator concurred with the procurement of 75 MW of new generation capacity from solar PV at the Lethabo power station, in the Free State, and 19.5 MW of solar PV at Sere Wind Farm, in the Western Cape
Plans are afoot for the City of Cape Town to slash the cost of a specialised meter by more than half, so that customers can use it to feed power back to the municipal grid. This is according to Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, who on Friday was speaking at Daily Maverick’s annual event, The Gathering.
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