Eskom is requesting the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to approve diesel costs of R16.9-billion for its upcoming financial year in line with a material upward revision in the assumed load factor of its diesel-fuelled open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) from 5% to 12%. The increase is designed to accommodate a steep reduction in the expected energy availability factor (EAF) from the State-owned utility’s coal-dominant fleet, which has been reduced to 59%.
Load-shedding will drop to Stage 5 at midnight as Eskom works overtime on repairs, but it is still battling breakdowns, it said on Monday. Technicians managed to return four units to service at Camden, Kriel, Kusile and Kendal respectively overnight, but had to take a unit offline at Duvha as it developed a boiler tube leak. Planned outages are 5 411MW and breakdowns currently amount to 16 326MW, Eskom said.
South Africa is teetering on the brink of its most severe power cuts yet, just two months after the government announced emergency measures to try and end intermittent outages, prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to cut short an overseas trip to oversee the response to the crisis. State power utility Eskom Holdings, which provides the bulk of the nation’s electricity, began cutting 6,000 megawatts from the national grid over the weekend — equivalent to the most on record — to prevent the collapse of the national grid and its executives warned there was a risk the situation could deteriorate further. The rand weakened to a two-year low against the dollar on Monday, while shares of mining and manufacturing companies slumped.
The rand weakened to R17.70/$ for the first time since 2020 on Monday morning, with investors digesting a deteriorating outlook, as well as the economic fallout for SA of Stage 6 load shedding. In early trade the rand had lost 0.8% to R17.739/$, bringing its year to date to above 11%, while it has now lost about 22% since its year-to-date high of R14.48/$ reached in late March.
The Brunel Solar Team from the Netherlands has won the 2022 Sasol Solar Challenge, followed by the Agoria team, from Belgium, with the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) team placed third. Brunel won with a distance of 4 228.2 km, with Agoria at 4 189.9 km, and TUT some distance back, at 2 682.4 km.
Eskom aims to approach the market imminently with an offer to buy up to 1 000 MW of surplus electricity that it believes could be immediately available from existing independent power producers (IPPs) and large companies with their own generation capacity, such as Sasol and Sappi. CEO André de Ruyter reported on Sunday that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan had given the utility permission to approach the market on an urgent basis, but he also indicated that the proposed purchases had not been canvassed with or approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), which will host public hearings this week on Eskom’s request for a 32% tariff hike in 2023.
South Africa’s State power utility Eskom favours burning more domestically sourced gas as it transitions away from coal, its Chief Executive Officer Andre de Ruyter said. With the structure of the nation’s demand changing and more renewable technology being added to the grid, additional storage in the form of batteries will be needed along with power that can be dispatched on demand, De Ruyter told a conference in Cape Town on Friday. “Gas is the solution to that problem,” he said. Eskom has “a strong preference” for tapping local gas supplies, rather than exposing itself to the supply, price volatility and foreign currency fluctuation risks associated with imports, he said. Eskom, which has amassed R413-billion of debt and is running at a loss, is only interested in buying the gas, and doesn’t envision investing in pipelines or field development.
South Africa will require R500-billion in private investment to end power cuts that are stalling economic growth by the start of 2025, said Peter Attard Montalto, Intellidex’s head of capital markets research. The money is needed to construct 15 gigawatts of generation capacity and five gigawatts of battery storage, he said, adding that the requirement is unlikely to be met within such a tight time-frame. “Ending load-shedding by end-2024 is possible, but a stretch,” Montalto said in a response to questions. It would require that all efforts to end the crisis and introduce energy reforms “would have to go like clockwork,” he said. The country will need to invest an additional R175-billion in expanding its power grid over the next decade, Montalto said.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) has moved to clarify a statement made by Minister Gwede Mantashe that a Bid Window Five (BW5) project under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) had reached financial close earlier this week. Mantashe made the statement in response to a question posed during a briefing held to provide an update on the implementation of the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, which includes energy security as a priority intervention.
South African power utility Eskom expects a final decision on a new $476 million World Bank loan to repurpose its Komati coal-fired power plant into a renewable station before November’s COP27 climate summit, CE Andre de Ruyter said on Friday. The money will be used for three packages, which includes decommissioning certain parts of the 1 000 MW Komati power plant that is currently only using one unit to despatch 125 MW of power when needed, as Eskom battles its worst period of power cuts since it started more than a decade ago.
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