The South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) is expecting the domestic market to recover this year to the record installation levels achieved two years ago, following a marked slowdown last year. CEO Dr Rethabile Melamu tells Engineering News that installations fell by more than 50% to about 1 GW in 2024/25, covering the period from April 1 to March 31, from 2.4 GW in 2023/24.
Strategic investment in industrial energy ecosystems is essential to enhance cost effectiveness, global competitiveness and the resilience of South Africa’s special economic zones (SEZs), thereby improving their long-term viability and appeal to manufacturers, says financial solutions provider Investec Sustainable Solutions technical adviser De Wet Taljaard. For SEZs to be effective in reindustrialisation and to help ensure that local entities become and remain globally competitive, reindustrialisation must be based on renewable-energy solutions, energy efficiency and sustainability, he asserts.
Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has provided an outline of a revised universal access strategy that employs a blended financing approach to electrify, by 2030, the more than 1.6-million households in South Africa that still do not have access to electricity. Speaking in Parliament, Ramokgopa said the new model would move beyond the traditional grid-only approach that had hitherto dominated South Africa’s multi-decade electrification programme, and include micro- and off-grid technologies.
Zambia’s Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) expects to significantly expand the country’s renewable-energy capacity, by adding a projected 800-MW-plus of solar energy to the national grid, by the end of 2027. This programme is in line with the country’s efforts to diversify its energy sources in the face of climate change-induced shortfalls in its hydropower generation. Zambia has always had predominantly green energy, in the form of hydropower from the Kariba dam. When the dam is full, Zambia’s share of the electricity generated is 3 GW, while the country’s demand is about 2.5 GW. But growing aridity in the Kafue and Zambesi rivers’ catchment areas has resulted in low dam levels, cutting its generating capacity significantly. Currently, Zambia is suffering from a generation shortfall of some 1.3 GW.
Energy Council of South Africa CEO James Mackay has highlighted three priorities for the organisation, whose public and private member companies have seconded some 300 professionals to support the implementation of government’s Energy Action Plan since its launch in 2022 to tackle intense loadshedding and to support electricity reform. In a statement released following the council’s recent AGM, Mackay again warned that the risk of loadshedding persisted, because new generation was not coming online at the pace required.
Global banks channeled more than $385-billion to the coal power industry over the past three years, with annual flows increasing last year from 2023, according to analysis by a group of nonprofits. At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, almost 200 governments agreed to phase down coal and many of the world’s largest commercial banks committed to decarbonize their portfolios. Four years on, those pledges have failed to make a dent on financial flows.
State-owned utility Eskom says it continues to take decisive action following the disclosure in its full-year 2024 financial results, released in December 2024, of a forensic report detailing the breach of its Online Vending System (OVS). The system was exploited to generate and distribute fraudulent prepaid electricity tokens, revealing critical vulnerabilities in both the physical and cybersecurity components of the utility’s prepaid electricity infrastructure.
In this opinion article, Dr Jonty Cogger and Paul Wani Lado, attorneys at the Centre for Environmental Rights, argue that the ‘gas cliff’ should not be used as a justification for building large-scale gas-to-power infrastructure without fully assessing the risks and cost implications. South Africa is approaching what many call the “gas cliff”. By 2028, the country’s main supply of natural gas from Mozambique is expected to run out. This has triggered concern in government and industry circles, with calls for urgent investment in new gas infrastructure (pipelines, import terminals, regasification facilities and storage) to allow for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The Energy Council of South Africa is strongly supportive of the goal of launching the initial phase of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM) in early 2026, arguing that the platform is key to sustaining reform momentum in the electricity sector amid signs of a slowdown. The National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), which has applied for a Market Operator licence, has indicated the SAWEM will be launched in a phased approach starting on April 1.
Africa’s largest standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) project, the 153 MW/ 612 MWh Red Sands project in the Northern Cape, has reached financial close, having raised some R5.4-billion in debt financing from Absa and Standard Bank. The project was selected as a preferred bidder in 2024 following the first BESS public procurement bidding round, and is being developed by Globeleq in partnership with African Rainbow Energy.
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