With the liberalisation of the South African electricity market, energy trading will become increasingly important. So highlighted Investec Project Finance Director Franca Sandham. She was participating in a panel discussion organised by energy transition financial consultancy Green Giraffe Advisory, on the fringe of the African Energy Indaba, in Cape Town, on Thursday. “Energy traders are essential to a more deregulated market,” she affirmed. “It’s inevitable. We’ll see more and more traders.”
Following its recent success in securing new public and private power purchase agreements, Pele Green Energy (PGE) is already having to consider additional funding options beyond the pioneering R2.5-billion Sithala facility concluded in November with Nedbank, Norfund and the Industrial Development Corporation. The facility has, for the first time, provided the black-owned independent power producer (IPP) with a consolidated funding platform designed to enable a competitive expansion in its operating portfolio from about 1 GW to 5 GW by 2027, as well as the capital needed to develop a project pipeline. It has also enabled PGE to refinance its existing group funding with a platform facility at the holding company level.
Government and business have set a goal of increasing South Africa’s electricity generation capacity by 10.5 GW by the end of 2025 as part of ongoing collaborative efforts to tackle growth-sapping power disruptions and reduce the intensity and almost daily frequency of loadshedding by year-end. In a briefing held following the latest meeting between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet and those senior business leaders who have committed to supporting government in overcoming its loadshedding, logistics and crime crises, the Presidency’s Rudi Dicks said the capacity could arise from multiple sources, including by recovering capacity from Eskom’s unreliable coal fleet.
JSE-listed Murray & Roberts (M&R) has reported a significant year-on-year reduction in its attributable loss for the six months ended December 31, 2023, signalling a positive turn in its financial performance. The company recorded a substantially reduced attributable loss of R95-million for the six months under review, which is in stark contrast to the R2.5-billion loss reported for the six months ended December 2022.
Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) was going to be essential to achieve the goal of universal access to energy by 2030, both in Africa and globally. So highlighted World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme Lead Energy Specialist Raihan Elahi, on Wednesday. He was addressing a session of the Africa Energy Indaba, in Cape Town. “We’re really off track” regarding achieving universal access to energy by 2030, he pointed out. Worldwide, in 2020, 675-million people still had no access to electricity, while in 2021, 2.3-billion people had no access to clean cooking methods. These shortfalls existed against a background of increased vulnerability to climate shocks.
The Southern African Power Pool’s (SAPP’s) Regional Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility (RTIFF) will be managed by climate-focused blended finance fund manager Climate Fund Managers (CFM), it was jointly announced on Tuesday, on the fringes of the 2024 Africa Energy Indaba, in Cape Town. The RTIFF, developed by the SAPP in partnership with the Southern African Development Community (SADC), aims to raise $1.3-billion to finance improved electricity interconnection and cross-border …
The number of hours of loadshedding in South Africa has been cut by 67% over the past three-and-a-half months, Energy Council of South Africa CEO James MacKay highlighted on Monday evening. He was participating in an event in Cape Town, hosted by UK innovation agency Innovate UK, and UK International Development, ahead of the Africa Energy Indaba. Loadshedding was the South African term for rotating scheduled power cuts, due to lack of generating capacity, imposed by national electricity utility Eskom. One of the reasons for the significant reduction in loadshedding hours has been the secondment, by the business sector, of experienced engineers to Eskom power stations. Further, renewable energy capacity in the country has increased rapidly.
Bid Window 8 of government’s Renewable Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme will be the last bid window under IRP 2019, says Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe. “We’ll then have issued all the bid windows provided for under IRP 2019.”
Global technology group Hitachi Energy and BluVein – an innovator in dynamic charging technology – have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate the electrification of heavy haul mining fleets. Hitachi Energy’s advanced power electronics and digital charging technologies allow BluVein’s electric rail (e-rail) charging technology to deliver electricity safely and reliably to haul trucks of up to 400 t while transporting materials.
Eskom insists it is on track to complete the repairs to the ducts in the west stack at the Kusile power station by December 2024, ahead of the March 31, 2025, deadline set by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) when it last year authorised the use of temporary stacks that bypass the key pollution control system. The west stack was rendered inoperable when Kusile’s Unit 1 flue duct collapsed because of an uncontrolled build-up of slurry on October 23, 2022. The failure eliminated 2 100 MW of Kusile’s capacity from an already stretched system, as units 2 and 3’s flues, which share a stack or chimney with that of Unit 1, were also damaged by the collapse.
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