Electricity utility Eskom told lawmakers on Wednesday that the risk of load-shedding remained high for the upcoming summer season, while confirming that there had already been 91 days of load-shedding during 2022. Eskom’s summer ‘base case’ is premised on there being 13 000 MW of onging unplanned breakdowns in addition to any planned maintenance, which rises substantially in the lower-demand summer months.
Financial services provider Capitec has commissioned solar installation company Impower to design, install and maintain an electricity solution that integrates both solar and a battery backup system, at its headquarters in Stellenbosch. The banking giant says it has turned to solar as a long-term solution to reduce its reliance on the national grid, minimise energy costs and play its part in contributing toward net zero.
South Africa is forging ahead with a plan to create a new State-owned power company by converting three coal-fired plants into gas-burning generators to ease the nation’s energy crisis. State power utility Eskom generates most of South Africa’s electricity, and has subjected the country to rolling blackouts since 2008 because its old and poorly maintained facilities can’t keep pace with demand. The proposed new company, dubbed Generation 2, will take over the three plants that are set for decommissioning, according to Energy, Minerals and Resource Minister Gwede Mantashe.
The Shoprite group has finalised R3.5-billion in sustainability-linked loans, with the aim to expand its key environmental programmes as part of a wider sustainability strategy. The finance agreements include a R2-billion loan from Standard Bank, as well as an R800-million sustainability-linked loan and a R700-million green loan from Rand Merchant Bank for investment in environmental projects.
A letter by a group of French businesses, who collectively employ more than 65 000 South Africans, has frustrated Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso with its detailing of significant problems facing the businesses in obtaining vital visas to enable French nationals working in South Africa.
“The letter set out the massive problems the companies have had in trying to secure work visas for key personnel – engineers, business controllers and experts needed to run specialised equipment,” she outlines in her latest weekly newsletter on August 29.
Africa-focused independent energy company Globeleq has signalled its intention to develop a large-scale green hydrogen facility in Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone. The company, which is 70% owned by British International Investment and 30% by Norfund, says it aims to capitalise on Egypt’s best-in-class wind and solar resources to competitively produce hydrogen and derivate products for export and the local market.
South Korean company Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) will construct the ‘turbine islands’ for Egypt’s first nuclear power plant (NPP), at El Dabaa, on the country’s Mediterranean coast, some 320 km north-west of Cairo. NPPs are subdivided into ‘nuclear islands containing the reactors and their associated systems and infrastructure, turbine islands, with the electricity-generating turbines and their associated systems and infrastructure, and the ‘balance of plant’, which is basically the …
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has issued an updated invitation, with an earlier September 16 deadline, for written comments regarding its concurrence with new Ministerial determinations allowing for the procurement of 18 791 MW of new electricity capacity. Nersa’s original invitation set a closing date of September 23 for the receipt of public comments, which would have been a day after the bid submission deadline for the sixth bid window (BW6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.
US President Joe Biden has approved the proposed agreement with South Africa to extend the two countries’ agreement on cooperation regarding the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This approval took the form of a Presidential ‘determination’, released by the White House on Thursday. The original agreement was signed in August 1995. It entered into effect in early December 1997, and was due to expire in early December this year.
Load-shedding has plagued South Africans for years after first being introduced by embattled power utility Eskom in 2007 due to insufficient electricity supply. The country has since endured bouts of ongoing power outages, or load-shedding, with 2022 set to become the worst year of load-shedding recorded.
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