South African energy trader Enpower Trading has appointed energy sector veteran Enos Banda as chairperson, adding impetus to its plans to accelerate private investment into power generation and help unlock more than an estimated 5 GW of renewable energy over five years. Banda served as early and transformative post-democracy National Energy Regulator of South Africa chairperson. In the early 2000s, he was also CEO of State-owned Eskom and responsible for the national electrification programme, as well as Eskom’s international independent power producer services, and its operations and maintenance provision in Libya, Nigeria, China, Uganda and the Southern African Development Community region.
Intergovernmental organisation the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its ‘Breakthrough Agenda Report 2022’ says international collaboration will be critical to successfully transition to sustainability, given the global scale and fast pace of change that is required. “Action by governments and businesses individually is necessary, but not sufficient. Well-targeted international collaboration can make low-carbon transitions faster, less difficult and lower cost.
Eskom shed close to 7 000 MW, associated with Stage 7, from the grid on Monday evening. In his daily system updates, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha tweeted that 6 770 MW were shed on Monday evening.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who cut short his international engagements as South Africa once again descended into Stage 6 load-shedding, has acknowledged that priority has to be given to solving the electricity crisis if the country aims to attract the investment required to raise growth and tackle high levels of unemployment. Writing in his weekly newsletter following a meeting in Washington DC with US President Joe Biden, where it was agreed that a joint task force on trade and investment be established to increase business ties between the two countries, Ramaphosa said: “First and foremost, we have to overcome the electricity crisis”.
Newly forged multistakeholder alliance the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA) has revealed its aim to increase installed global offshore wind capacity by 670%, from 57 GW in 2021 to 380 GW by 2030. The aim of the GOWA is to add 35 GW on average every year across the 2020s and a minimum of 70 GW each year from 2030, culminating in 2 000 GW by 2050.
State-owned power utility Eskom on September 19 launched three programmes to procure more than 1 000 MW for the national grid, which will initially focus on generators capable of supplying more than 1 MW to the grid. The aim is to sign the first power supply agreement during the course of the current week and for the power to start flowing through the grid as soon as possible.
The EnergyDrive experiential education mobile unit, which will visit more than 3 000 school learners in Mpumalanga during this week, features a solar roof structure, biogas digester, a photovoltaic (PV) panel display unit and a solar hot water display unit and helps to teach learners about these new energy technologies. The walls of the mobile container are made up of a battery bank, PV components, a television and display cupboards, making it an inspirational and experiential teaching aid.
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.
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