The African National Congress has voted to scrap a planned Parliamentary investigation into the state’s much-delayed plan to fast-track the building of emergency power plants. Parliament’s oversight committee on mineral resources and energy voted in August last year to launch a probe into the Risk Mitigation IPP Procurement Programme, an initiative to add 2 000 MW of new power to SA’s grid quickly. The inquiry’s terms of reference were agreed on in December. The inquiry was set to probe problems relating to the programme as well as allegations surrounding the awarding of a R22-billion contract to Turkish-led consortium Karpowership SA, which faced subsequent litigation.
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State-owned utility Eskom says it is still in the process of quantifying the likely impact of surging diesel prices on the cost of producing electricity at its open cycle gas turbine (OCGT) facilities but has cautioned that continued steep price rises will be difficult to absorb in light of its financial constraints. Eskom had been relying heavily on its OCGT plants, as well as those operated by independent power producers, ahead of its most recent decision to implement Stage 2 load-shedding on Monday – a decision that has since been extended to 5:00 on Saturday March 12.
Power utility Eskom said on Tuesday it will continue power cuts in the country until 05:00 on Saturday as many of the power plant units broke down on Monday and are under repair. The power cuts, called Stage 2 load-shedding in South Africa, started from 17:00 on Monday.
Power utility Eskom will implement Stage 2 load-shedding from 21:00 on Monday to 05:00 on Tuesday morning and again from 21:00 on Tuesday evening to 05:00 on Wednesday morning. Eskom said this was owing to the failure of a number of generating units over the past 24 hours.
The City of Cape Town’s Energy Directorate has accepted an offer of technical assistance from the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) South African Energy Programme (SAEP). The donation will assist the city with a number of projects relating to renewable energy buying, generation and energy efficiency interventions.
Eskom has announced the deferral of a project to replace three steam generators at Koeberg Unit 2 to August 2023 following a review, conducted together with Framatome, which indicated that the replacements were unlikely to be completed within the six-month timeframe allocated for the project. COO Jan Oberholzer said that certain facilities, including the completion of the building that will house the radioactive steam generators being removed, were not deemed to be fully in place to ensure that the replacement could be completed within the expected quality and schedule parameters.
The African Energy Chamber (AEC) has hosted a prelude launch of its Team-Energy Africa initiative before the high-level launch event scheduled for May 17 to 19 in Rwanda.
The initiative, which AEC is embarking on in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Secretariat of Sustainable Energy for All, aims to mobilise private sector financing for accelerated clean energy deployments in Africa.
Industrial equipment supplier Becker’s Kito electric chain and manual hoists have been designed for dependable use in materials handling applications in diverse industries. These include mining, construction, shipbuilding, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals processing, manufacturing and general industry, as well as in chemicals and petrochemicals plants and the wind power sector.
Expanded local production capacity from drive systems company SEW-Eurodrive’s new Aeroton facility includes the assembly of SEW M-Series air-cooled condenser (MACC) drives for delivery at a rate of three units a week, reducing current lead times from overseas original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) by about 36 weeks.
Built as part SEW-Eurodrive’s M-Series modular industrial gear units, the MACC is a purpose designed gearbox solution for driving the modern fan-based air-cooled condenser (ACC) systems used in steam-driven power generation plants.
The green energy transition is at the forefront of most business discussions and climate change mitigation strategies and energy storage will play a big role in not only adding value to renewable energy systems, but also in helping to advance decarbonisation and energy security.
“Energy storage will undoubtedly play a major role in the decarbonisation and green energy transition movements in the world as it strives to solve intermittency issues with renewable energy, such as solar and wind.
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