The prospect of rapid growth in solar photovoltaic (PV) installations across South Africa will create opportunities for the localisation of supply chains and for domestic manufacturing, a new study commissioned by the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) has confirmed. However, the report also underlines the importance of economies of scale and stable and predictable demand for facilitating the investments needed for the manufacture of components such as PV modules, inverters, mounting structures and cables.
A contractor working at the Camden power station was arrested on November 16 after he was positively linked to an incident of sabotage following intensive investigative work by State-owned Eskom. The perpetrator, who is employed by a maintenance company working at the power station, intentionally removed a bearing oil drain plug from a bearing, causing the oil burners to trip repeatedly, Eskom said.
A contractor working at Camden power station in Mpumalanga was arrested on Tuesday after being positively linked to an incident of sabotage. The contractor admitted to intentionally removing the oil drain plug from a bearing on Thursday last week, causing oil burners to trip repeatedly, Eskom said in a statement.
Municipal power utility City Power has gone out to the market to secure excess energy from alternative energy sources through short term power purchase agreements of up to 36 months. This step towards mitigating and eventually ending rolling blackouts follows commitments made at the two-day Joburg Energy Indaba in April.
Electricity utility Eskom has outlined a plan to deliver 6 000 MW of much-needed capacity over the coming two years from its own fleet, primarily by recovering production at six underperforming coal stations and also by completing its much-delayed build programme. However, the utility again stressed the need for between 4 000 MW and 6 000 MW of non-Eskom supply to help stabilise the loadshedding-prone system and to provide its generation division with the time and space required to implement maintenance across its neglected coal stations.
Africa can benefit massively from seizing opportunities presented by the global green revolution, including by leapfrogging existing technologies, but this will not happen spontaneously and will require green industrial policy to facilitate developments, German Development Institute sustainable economic and social development head of department Dr Tilman Altenburg said this week. The complexities of the current global clean energy revolution – compared with earlier industrial revolutions that centred on a technology or a related set of technologies – make the planning and sequencing of changing industries and economies to use renewable energy difficult, as the clean energy revolution is expected to impact on a significant range of industries, as well as on mobility, social and economic activities, he stated.
The acting group executive for generation at Eskom, Rhulani Mathebula, is leaving the utility with immediate effect. This is the second change to the position in almost six months.
South Africa had an indigenous design for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), a simplified derivative of the country’s State-funded Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, highlighted nuclear physicist and Stratek Global chairperson Dr Kelvin Kemm in his address to the Energy Indaba conference in Cape Town on Monday. (The PBMR project was effectively terminated in 2009.) This derivative, which was being developed with private funding, was designated the HTMR-100. This was a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (like the PBMR), making it a Generation IV reactor design. It also meant that it did not need water for cooling, allowing it to be deployed in arid areas, away from coastlines. This made the design very suitable for South Africa and much of the rest of the African continent and in fact it had been specifically designed to meet African conditions, including with regard to issues such as maintenance.
Rich nations have stuck to pledges to phase out coal power despite the energy crunch in the wake of the Ukraine war but China’s expanding coal fleet risks counteracting the climate impact of the closures, a report said on Tuesday. Countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum and the European Union are on track to close more than 75% of their coal power capacity from 2010 to 2030, the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) said.
In this article, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung – South African Institute of International Affairs scholar Danielle Marais writes about the importance of Africa’s mineral resources for the global green energy transition.
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