South Africa’s Eskom Holdings is on track to post its seventh consecutive full-year loss as the utility crumbles under the weight of its debt pile and high financing costs, poor plant performance and a ballooning municipality arrears book. The state-owned electricity provider posted a 1.62 billion-rand ($85 million) interim profit in the period through Sept. 30, from a prior 3.8 billion-rand profit a year earlier, the company said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday.
This week’s announcements of government’s plan to pursue the procurement process for 2 500 MW of new nuclear capacity, along with Cabinet’s decision to endorse a R3.7-billion investment deal between PetroSA and Gazprombank to resuscitate the gas-to-liquids refinery in Mossel Bay, “appear to have been taken in haste and lack sufficient transparency, clarity and rationality”, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) says in a statement. “Both deals smack of a government that is desperate to secure dubious contracts ahead of the 2024 elections, since there is a strong possibility that those currently in positions of power may no longer be around to approve deals of this nature,” posits Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage.
A consortium comprising of energy companies EDF, TotalEnergies and Sumitomo Corporation, has been selected as the strategic partner by the government of Mozambique and has entered into a joint development agreement (JDA) for the development of the Mphanda Nkuwa hydropower project (MNK). The MNK is a proposed 1 500 MW run-of-river hydropower project to be located on the Zambezi river, 60 km downstream from Cahora Bassa and 60 km from Tete City.
The Power Operations & Leadership Association of Southern Africa (Polasa) believes the famine-then-feast profile of Eskom’s execution plan for the roll-out of new transmission infrastructure will starve an already embattled domestic industry to the point where it will be unable to make the manufacturing and skills investments required to participate in the later steep rise in grid expenditure. Chairperson Sagren Moodley tells Engineering News that the back-end-loaded nature of the execution plan for the ten-year Transmission Development Plan (TDP) to 2032 is of “great concern” to the industry as only 12% of the 14 218 km of powerlines proposed for construction under the plan has been earmarked for implementation during the first five-year window.
The COP28 climate talks in Dubai ended in a deal that saw a commitment to transition away from all fossil fuels for the first time. The president of this year’s UN-sponsored summit, the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber, brokered an agreement that was strong enough for the US and European Union on the need to dramatically curb fossil fuel use while keeping Saudi Arabia and other oil producers on board.
Electricity management and equipment company Schneider Electric has appointed Christophe Begat as Anglophone Africa Industry and Segment VP. Begat has been at the helm of the company’s operations in countries, including Iraq, Algeria, Singapore and, most recently, Nigeria overseeing the West African region. He has a career spanning 32 years at Schneider Electric.
The South African government will publish a request for proposals (RFP) for 2 500 MW of new nuclear capacity by March 2024, following the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (Nersa’s) concurrence with a procurement determination published in 2020. Nersa’s concurrence, which was provided on September 2, had been conditional on the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) meeting several suspensive conditions, including establishing, through a demand and generation profile analysis, the rationality of adding 2 500 MW of nuclear, and confirmation that engineering, procurement and construction contract principles would be used during the procurement phase.
Renewable energy company Scatec’s Kenhardt hybrid solar and battery storage project has officially started producing and supplying electricity to the national grid from its three plants in the Northern Cape. The project has an installed solar capacity of 540 MW and a battery storage capacity of 225 MW, or 1 140 MWh, and delivers 150 MW of dispatchable power from 05:00 to 21:30 year-round to the national grid under a 20-year power purchase agreement with State-owned Eskom.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has confirmed that the draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) approved by Cabinet for public comment includes two time horizons as well as significant changes to the underlying assumptions that inform the plan when compared with the prevailing edition. However, she was unable to offer a timeframe for when the document would be Gazetted by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, nor could she provide specifics on the comment period that will be allocated and whether public hearings would be held.
Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso has warned of the deteriorating health sector without the prospect of recovery, owing in large part to the passage last week of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill into law, barring the assent of President Cyril Ramaphosa. In her weekly newsletter published on December 11, Mavuso called this development a “shocking negative” for the health sector and noted its potentially dire consequences for the South African economy.
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