Eskom reports that it has made material advances in developing what it calls a ‘virtual wheeling product’ that will allow one or more generators to transact with multiple offtakers, including those supplied by municipal distributors. However, the utility insists that a national wheeling framework is still urgently required so as to standardise the calculation of wheeling charges across all of South Africa’s distributors, with such charges currently varying significantly from distributor to distributor.
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The 9.6GW nuclear project, under former president Jacob Zuma’s administration, failed because government failed to develop it “systematically” at a “pace and rate” the country could afford, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe has said. The minister was speaking during a webinar about the just transition hosted by the Wits Business School on Thursday.
Despite the negative impacts that coal-fired power stations have on the environment and local populations, localized energy solutions developer NET Energy owner Mike Blenkinsop has stressed that the detrimental impact of removing coal-fired power capacity from the South African electricity system would also be significant, as many rely on the coal industry for work opportunities.
City Power has begun its installation and reset of prepaid electricity meters in Johannesburg before they all stop working next year. The electricity entity began visiting customers in residential homes in Hursthill on Wednesday, with 200 City Power agents targeting 4 000 households daily.
An urgent piece of legislation that is key to overcoming SA’s energy crisis has yet to be introduced into Parliament, it emerged on Wednesday, raising the fear that it will not be passed this year. The Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill was approved by the Cabinet in March with the promise by Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni that it would be prioritised.
Norwegian entities, as existing investors with more than 3 GW of renewable energy projects in South Africa, are eager to facilitate more business between the two countries and further into the African continent, particularly as South Africa is undertaking regulatory reforms to liberalise its energy market. In a panel discussion hosted by Oslo-headquartered renewable energy company Scatec on August 15, Norwegian Ambassador to South Africa Gjermund Sæther said South Africa was a leader on the African continent, showing increasing potential for business-to-business cooperation.
Resources investment company Menar MD Vuslat Bayoglu has emphasised that South Africa is on the precipice of a significant industrial revolution. Fuelling this revolution, however, will require a consistent and reliable baseload power source that can only be produced by coal-fired power stations, despite calls from more developed countries for South Africa to reduce its coal-fired power station capacity to achieve sustainability and carbon dioxide emission reduction goals, he said on the first day of the Southern African Coal Processing Society International Coal Conference, in Secunda, Mpumalanga, on August 15.
Turkish energy company Karpowership, which has been seeking to implement three ship-based power projects in South Africa after being named one of the preferred bidders in the government’s Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP), is “very confident” that the projects will proceed, despite prolonged regulatory setbacks. “It has been two years of going through all these processes and the only remaining licence to get are the environmental licences,” Karpowership South Africa and regional director Mehmet Katmer said during a visit to one of the company’s current projects in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week.
Johannesburg will get no special treatment from Eskom when it hosts a major Brics summit later this month, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said. The 15th Brics summit will take place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg between 22 and 24 August.
Government has again moved to dismiss suggestions that the unbundling of the Eskom generation, transmission and distribution businesses into three separate entities can be regarded as privatisation, noting that it is in line with a long-standing policy as well as a restructuring plan for Eskom approved by Cabinet in 2019. “We are not selling anything,” the Presidency’s Rudi Dicks stressed at a regular briefing on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan, hosted weekly by Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
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