South Africa plans to launch three procurement rounds for 6 800 MW of renewable energy over the next year, as well as a combined 5 000 MW of new coal, gas and storage, a presentation by the governing African National Congress (ANC) showed. The presentation, made at a three-day meeting of party officials and allies that ended on Sunday and shared with Reuters by two sources, showed the ANC planned to launch the first renewables round in January or February for 2 600 MW of wind and solar, with another 2 600 MW round in August and a third for 1 600 MW in January or February 2022.
State-owned electricity utility Eskom will make the case later this month for the immediate execution of a High Court order stipulating that an amount of R23-billion stripped unlawfully from its allowable revenue in 2019 by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) be added back during its 2021/22 financial year. Should it succeed, the standard average electricity tariff would rise by 15.6% on April 1, instead of the 5.01% already sanctioned by Nersa.
Credit rating company Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded the long-term rating of energy company Enel to Baa1, from the previous level of Baa2, with a stable outlook.
The ratings agency has also affirmed the Prime-2 short-term ratings of the subsidiaries Enel Finance International and Enel Finance America.
State-owned power utility Eskom has confirmed that tropical storm Eloise has, at this stage, not had any major negative impact on its operations. The utility, however, says power lines in some parts of the Mpumalanga, Limpopo and northern KwaZulu-Natal provinces did experience localised outages as a result of trees and poles falling on power lines districts.
City of Johannesburg Environment and Infrastructure Services MMC Councillor Mpho Moerane has expressed concern about the increase in electricity cable theft incidents across the city. Since the start of the current financial year, cables worth over R14-million have been stolen.
Renewable energy company Kipeto Energy (KEP) has connected the Kipeto wind farm to the national grid and will start generating power in the next week. KEP has connected a 17-km-long 220 KV high-voltage transmission line, linking the facility to the national grid at the Isinya substation, and signalling the start of the go-live process.
The evaluation of the 28 bids received under South Africa’s Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP) is anticipated to be concluded by February 2021, the IPP Office has confirmed with Engineering News. The preferred bidders, it adds, will be announced as soon as the recommendations from the evaluation team have been approved by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE).
Creamer Media’s Chanel de Bruyn speaks to Engineering News Editor Terence Creamer about the fact that South Africa is still experiencing load-shedding, but remains slow to open up the market to distributed energy projects, as well as about what could be done to realise this pent-up potential.
Following local automotive battery manufacturer AutoX’s 18-month research and development process at its manufacturing plant, in Port Elizabeth, the company launched its gel-based batteries for the local automotive industry at the end of last year. Vehicles, from passenger cars to commercial vehicles, use lead-acid batteries, which are also known as flooded batteries because the electrolyte – the chemical that facilitates the production of the electrical current – is in a liquid state.
Power generation and power transmission product supplier Vert Energy offers custom-designed solutions for dependable power in areas without connection to the mains. “There is often the inconvenience of having to do work that requires electricity, in areas where there is no connection to the mains. As part of our commitment to solving problems for customers in every area of industry, we offer a dependable solution to difficult power generation issues with specially designed Leroy Somer (LS) Tractelec system,” says Very Energy MD Grant Robertson.
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