Paarl-based wine cellars Boland Cellar and peer-to-peer solar leasing platform Sun Exchange received crowd funding from 1 204 individuals from 85 countries to finance a 473 kW solar project to provide clean electricity for the wine cellar, while also reducing its electricity costs and emissions. The crowdsourced and global approach to solar finance was enabled through Sun Exchange’s innovative online platform.
Canadian mining company Robex Resources and Vivo Energy, which sells and distributes Shell- and Engen-branded fuels and lubricants in Africa, have reached an agreement for Vivo Energy to supply solar energy to the Nampala gold mine, in Mali, for a period of five to fifteen years. The project will result in the construction of a 3.9 MW solar photovoltaic power plant, with a battery storage capacity of 2.6 MWh which, owing to the energy management system, will be fully integrated into the mine’s existing thermal power plant.
Although national government has opened the door for municipalities to procure electricity from independent power producers (IPPs), a lot of “regulatory ironing out” still needs to happen before power purchase agreements (PPAs) can be signed.
In May last year, the Energy Minister gave permission for the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to licence 500 MW of small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) projects, sized between 1 MW and 10 MW, without the need for the Minister to sign it off.
Leading wind-energy project developers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are convinced that South Africa’s plan to install 1.6 GW of new wind capacity yearly until 2030 is more than sufficient to attract large-scale industrial investment. These captains of industry warn, however, that the country will need to back-up the policy certainty currently being provided by the Integrated Resource Plan 2019 (IRP2019) with consistent implementation.
Renewables remain the lowest-cost source of new power generation in most parts of the world, with prices continuing to decline and making it a promising sector for development in most countries.
The price of onshore wind, for example, declined from $86/MWh in 2009 to $53/MWh in 2019, representing a 40% decline in the last ten years, states Danish Energy Agency energy adviser Andrea Isidori.
South Africa’s biggest cities are preparing to source their own power after the energy ministry this month approved letting them wean themselves off the state utility that’s subjected cities to outages for the past 13 years.
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) – which reported a R3.8-billion loss for the 2019/20 financial year, driven by a surge in impairments from R4.8-billion to R9.6-billion – has revised its investment strategy with the aim of “catalysing” government’s Reconstruction and Recovery Plan through risk-sharing partnerships with private and public co-financiers. CEO TP Nchocho stressed that the State-owned development finance institution (DFI) would continue to operate at the “upper end of the risk spectrum” in supporting the plan, announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on October 15 and which included strong infrastructure, industrial, energy and agricultural components.
With the commissioning of the final wind turbine at the 140 MW Nxuba Wind Farm in the Eastern Cape, Enel Green Power (EGP) has started with the generation and delivery of energy. The company says this is despite challenges attributed to Covid-19 containment measures and national lockdown.
Power auctions are fast becoming the dominant procurement method for renewable energy globally, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is not without its crucial requirements for success.
University of Cape Town (UCT) specialist research unit Power Futures Lab research fellow Wikus Kruger on the first day of the annual Windaba conference hosted virtually on October 26 discussed global trends in renewable energy auctions and what this means for South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).
The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) has confirmed that it is in preliminary talks with State-owned national electricity utility Eskom regarding extending the operating life of the country’s only nuclear power plant (NPP) at Koeberg, north of Cape Town. Currently, Koeberg is licensed by the NNR to operate until 2024. Eskom wishes to extend the NPP’s operating life by 20 years, and informed the NNR of this in July. The utility will make its formal application to the NNR for a license for ‘Long …
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