Johannesburg’s City Power is seeking manufacturing and venture capital partners to further develop and pilot a rugged ‘energy box’ concept in one of the city’s 312 informal settlements as a possible greener and safer alternative to the illegal connections that currently predominate. Chief engineer for renewable energy Paul Vermeulen says the idea is to locate 3 kWh energy storage boxes – linked to lighting, charging and cooking appliances – within individual dwellings and link these to a centralised solar photovoltaic generator securely located on a nearby warehouse or factory rooftop.
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The City of Cape Town (CoCT) says it is moving closer to turning landfill waste into energy, with two projects that are designed to produce electricity from the combustion of landfill gas moving towards implementation. Landfill gas, primarily made up of methane, is produced when organic matter, such as food scraps, break down at landfill sites.
Independent power company Globeleq has appointed Jonathan Hoffman interim CEO, effective end-June.
He has been chief development officer of the company since 2020 and will be succeeding Mike Scholey as CEO once he steps down.
Ahead of the upcoming May 29 elections, State-owned power utility Eskom has cautioned all political parties against the “dangerous practice” of placing election posters on electrical structures. The utility said in the past there had been incidents of electrocution whilst posters were being put up, which it said contravened the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
South Africa’s much-delayed draft Gas Master Plan (GMP2024) has been released for public comment by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, amid indications that the gap between demand and supply will grow steeply from 2026 onwards when Sasol ceases to supply Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal industrial customers with gas imported from Mozambique. The document includes four scenarios, including a base case that shows that gas demand will far exceed supply in the short term and that the gap, which has been described as an anticipated ‘gas cliff’, will worsen as demand grows.
Amid the energy challenges facing South Africa, residential solar energy company GoSolr says radical steps must be taken to secure the country’s energy supply and notes that solar energy will have a key role to play in ensuring security of supply.
In its inaugural quarterly solar update, or Light Paper, the company points out that South Africa experienced 68 days of loadshedding in the first quarter of this year.
During a State of the System address hosted on Friday, Eskom confirmed its generation recovery plan (GRP) is making tangible progress, with various coal-fired power station units having been refurbished, repaired or optimised. Launched in April 2023 following extensive stakeholder engagements, including with power station managers, the GRP aims to address challenges affecting South Africa’s energy availability factor (EAF) within a two-year timeframe.
Newly appointed Eskom group CEO Dan Marokane has provided assurances that loadshedding during the upcoming winter months will likely be contained at Stage 2, thanks to improvements in generation performance across the coal-fired power station fleet.
As of April 26, Eskom has marked 30 consecutive days without loadshedding, which Marokane said on Friday was a “good moment” to reflect on. He attributed the achievement to the success of the generation recovery plan (GRP) implemented by the State-owned power utility since April 2023.
EDF Renewables is currently leading the construction of almost 1.2 GW of low-carbon power generation capacity in South Africa, comprised of 763 MW of wind power, 355 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) and 75 MW of battery storage. This new build programme comprises eight sites across the Northern and Eastern Cape, developed by EDF Renewables and its partners.
In this essay, Terence Creamer reflects on the factors that have shaped South Africa’s real-economy sectors of manufacturing, mining and agriculture over the past 30 years and considers ways to end the economy’s persistent underperformance
INDUSTRY NEWS
- DMRE to push for Cabinet approval of new-look IRP by end-March despite big revisionsNovember 26, 2024 - 6:04 pm
- NTCSA appoints EPC suppliers for transmission substationsNovember 25, 2024 - 5:05 pm
- Eskom finalises technical breakthrough enabling it to extend deadline for meter conversionsNovember 25, 2024 - 1:04 pm
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