South Africa’s electricity crisis is costing the economy as much as R899 million a day, according to central bank estimates. Rolling blackouts of about 6 to 12 hours a day, or so-called Stage 3 and Stage 6 outages, detract between R204-million and R899 million from the economy daily, the South African Reserve Bank said in an emailed response to questions on Monday. Power cuts, known locally as load shedding, are needed to protect the grid from collapse when state-owned company Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s aging and poorly maintained and mostly coal-fed plants can’t meet demand.
An increased use of the diesel-fuelled open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) represents South Africa’s only short-term defence against higher levels of economically damaging loadshedding, a new analysis of the country’s power crisis shows. However, the new Meridian Economics briefing note also outlines a strong case for incentivising rooftop solar to reduce the need for diesel, noting that distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have the shortest deployment lead times and are “immune from any constraints posed by the transmission network”.
In sharing its stance on climate change at the Investing in African Mining Indaba, in Cape Town, the Minerals Council South Africa has acknowledged that the mining industry can, and should, play a role in adapting to and mitigating the consequences of climate change in South Africa. This includes efforts to support a Just Energy Transition in the country, while still promoting investment into clean coal technologies and alternative coal uses.
The call by the African National Congress for a State of Disaster to be declared over the energy crisis has come as a surprise to organised business, given that only a few months ago President Cyril Ramaphosa said this been considered but that legal advice was that it could not be implemented, business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso writes in her weekly newsletter. “A State of Disaster triggers emergency powers that can limit Constitutional rights. The relevant legislation provides reasons to declare a State of Disaster, particularly to assist and protect the public, provide relief, protect property and prevent and combat corruption. Under a State of Disaster, the executive can issue regulations that limit rights but only if, in doing so, they achieve the objectives of the state of disaster,” she outlines.
South Africa is nearing 100 consecutive days of rolling blackouts, the longest stretch yet, with more to come as its electricity crisis deepens. Eskom , the state-owned company that produces almost all the electricity in Africa’s most industrialised economy, has imposed blackouts daily since October 31, making Monday the 99th straight day of outages, according to Bloomberg calculations. Power rationing, known locally as loadshedding, is needed to protect the nation’s grid from collapse when Eskom’s aging and poorly maintained and mostly coal-fed plants can’t meet demand, which happened on 200 days over 2022.
Real estate investment trust (Reit) Growthpoint Properties is going to great lengths to ensure its buildings and tentants’ businesses remain powered up during South Africa’s electricity crisis and more intense bouts of loadshedding. The Reit has installed 13.5 MW of renewable energy generation across more than 20 rooftop and carport solar plants and plans to double this capacity by June.
The absence of a functional mining cadastre in South Africa, which has been undermining the sector for years, is now having potentially negative knock-on effects for developers of renewable-energy projects, particularly in Mpumalanga – a region where there is still capacity to connect new projects to the grid and the designated epicentre of South Africa’s just energy transition. AmaranthCX director Paul Miller, who has conducted extensive mapping of the coal mines and projects in Mpumalanga, says without the cadastre renewables developers are facing difficulties in complying with a legal requirement to identify any mining or prospecting rights on, or within two kilometres of the proposed development.
Dairy producer Woodlands Dairy has implemented several renewable energy resource projects at its large facility in Humansdorp aimed at replacing fossil fuels and reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. The first step in a multi-phase solar initiative was completed in 2021, which consisted of 1 922 JA Solar photovoltaic modules and ten SolarEdge inverters and optimiser combinations, capable of generating 828 kW. The installed solar capacity is anticipated to provide 1.5 GWh/y of power, reducing the facility’s carbon emissions by 588 t, equivalent to planting 17 558 trees each year.
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille has been requested by State-own utility Eskom to expropriate servitudes, in terms of existing legislation, for electricity transmission lines on its behalf to allow it to supply more power to areas in Limpopo than what is currently possible. According to De Lille, all the affected owners were served with the application and given the opportunity to comment thereon.
A Just Energy Transition (JET) was in the interests of South Africa, the World Bank has concluded. So reported World Bank senior energy economist Mariano Salto in a panel discussion at the Southern African Coal Conference, in Cape Town, on Friday. Renewable energy was the least-cost energy option for the country. But as wind and solar power were variable, other technologies were needed to cover this variability. South Africa had these technologies. Further, these options when implemented on scale would reduce the demand, and so strain, on Eskom’s power stations, allowing the utility to undertake long-postponed maintenance. Moreover, having a large number of small power stations would reduce generation risk; should a large Eskom power station suffer a failure, the result was loadshedding, but should a solar array at a renewable power station fail, no one would notice.
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