South Africa plans to lift the licensing threshold for small-scale power generation projects to 10MW from 1MW, a boost to firms anxious to curb their reliance on the ailing Eskom, but industry experts had hoped for more.
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South African prosecutors are seeking the extradition of a British national who’s been implicated in a fraudulent deal with Eskom.
Officials from the department of mineral resources & energy appeared before a parliamentary portfolio committee on Tuesday to brief it on the Karpowership contract to supply power from vessels to South Africa.
Government’s proposed deal with Karpowership to buy electricity generated on its three floating power stations over a period of 20 years will expose consumers to considerable risk.
Eskom will implement load shedding from 9pm on Tuesday evening as it fights breakdowns at its power plants. The power cuts – at stage 2 – will last until 5am on Wednesday.
A fallout between top executives at Eskom took a new turn, with the utility’s CEO accusing its now-suspended chief procurement officer of facilitating R8-billion of deals with a company suspected of fraud.
An oil blending and storage company secured deals to supply Eskom with fuel oil worth more than R15-billion at inflated prices by paying inducements, including donations to the ANC, an investigation has found.
A key funder of South Africa’s renewable energy drive is backing natural gas as the fuel needed to help the country bridge the transition from coal power generation to the use of wind and solar.
The decreasing performance of the existing Eskom plants is evident in the steady decline of the energy availability factor. On average, 35% of Eskom’s power plants are standing idle at any particular time.
Eskom said on Wednesday that it has added up to 800MW of supply to the national grid after unit 3 at the Kusile power station was brought online this week.