Presidency and City Power give their view on renewables
Energy adviser Silas Zimu justifies holding on to coal assets while calling for fast-tracking of renewables; City Power chairperson admits the entity needs help of independent power producers
Energy adviser in the Presidency Silas Zimu says the swift rate at which coal plants are being shut down and the snail’s pace at which renewables is being introduced are what has led South Africa to an energy and economic crisis, which is why old coal-fired plants must be kept open.
“The minister of electricity decided that we’re not shutting down [old coal plants] because this is what started the 2023 load shedding,” said Zimu on Monday, 18 March. “We’re supposed to keep them going and fast-track the introduction of renewables.”
He was giving the keynote address, on behalf of Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, at the opening of The Future Energy Show Africa, Africa’s largest renewable energy exhibition, which took place at Gallagher Convention Centre in Johannesburg.
Speaking to a room of independent power producers, government officials, large energy users, solution providers and academics, Zimu explained that the problem wasn’t about introducing renewables – the Presidency had always supported that – but that not enough renewable energy was being introduced to replace the coal plants planned for shutdown.
In the 13 years since the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme was introduced, only 6,200MW have been added.
Zimu said the last renewables connected to the grid was from the programme’s bid round four. The fifth round of independent power producer projects was signed at the end of 2022 under bid window five, but these projects (meant to add 2,583MW) are only expected to be added to the grid in 2025.
Zimu said when Ramokgopa started his work as electricity minister, he visited 18 power stations and discovered “that we’ve got a lot of supply that is installed, but half of it is not working”.
In light of the power crisis, Zimu said it was decided to delay the closing date of older coal-fired power stations that were set to be decommissioned, such as Arnot, Camden, Hendrina and Grootvlei, under Eskom’s policy to shut down 22GW of installed coal capacity by 2035.
“I said, let’s take a risk. Let’s not shut down these stations,” said Zimu.
“And believe you me, these stations, when they’re running, run better and more reliably than our latest Kusile and Medupi [coal-fired power stations]. And they are running. So we saved the economy.”
Zimu said the entire world faced the problem of electricity demand exceeding what countries were able to produce.
“But none of them does what a lot of them tell us to do. They’re saying shut down your coal stations,” said Zimu, “but what they do in their country is fixing the current assets.”
He said South Africa’s coal-powered electricity plants were what kept the country going. “If you look at the [International Energy Agency’s] World Energy Outlook, the whole world is still reliant on coal,” he added.
First carbon capture at Kelvin
Zimu said Africa’s first carbon capture would be launched at Kelvin power station in Johannesburg on 20 March, funded by the Department of Science and Innovation. “And our dream is that this can then be rolled out to a few of the coal power stations so that we don’t have to shut them down.”
Acknowledging the threat of climate change, Zimu said: “What needs to be done to save the economy is to fast-track the renewables.”
This would include technologies fuel-cell and nuclear power.
He emphasised that the problem with rolling out renewables was that the transmission grid was tied up, especially in the Northern Cape, where a lot of investment in solar projects had taken place.
“And as we’re speaking today, solar companies and developers are still applying for grid access, but we know there is no grid access.”
City Power going to the market
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City Power chairperson Bonolo Ramokhele made strong calls to the private market for energy generation and to improve its crumbling network. He said the municipality-owned entity had many challenges, “and we’re hoping that some of those solutions are going to come from the people sitting here”.
Ramokhele said City Power was looking to “aggressively increase our partnership and build a compact with the private sector so that we’re able to deliver for the 5.6 million residents of Johannesburg”.
City Power originally started as an electricity distributor for the City of Johannesburg, which got most of its power (about 90%) from Eskom and the rest from Kelvin power station.
Ramokhele said while the utility was waiting for electricity generation to stabilise from Eskom’s side, it was going to the market to deal with the immediate issue of rolling blackouts.
City Power would now be bringing in independent power producers after finally getting approval from its board and the city council of Johannesburg at the end of January. This programme would work similarly to the bid windows of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.
For the first bid window, City Power was looking for 700MW to 1,000MW.
“I think I’m winning the debate internally that if we’re able to get, let’s say 2,000MW of really good projects, that also would ensure that you’ve got grid stability,” said Ramokhele.
Additionally, the utility was adding open-cycle gas turbines to its business model. Ramokhele said these turbines were owned by City Power and had been lying dormant for about 12 years. They would provide an additional 100MW and would be launched towards the end of this month and into April.
R50-billion to fix a century-old network
It’s no secret that City Power’s network is not in a good condition – communities across the City of Johannesburg are constantly making calls about substations being broken and transformers having blown.
Ramokhele said the network issues stemmed mainly from it being old. “There are certain parts of our network, like the inner city and Roodepoort, that have been in place since the 1930s.”
He explained that it was difficult to find spares for equipment that was nearly a century old.
Ramokele said it would take about R50-billion to get City Power’s old network up to scratch. At present, the entity spent about R1-billion on capital expenditure a year. “So you can do the maths. It’s going to take us roughly about 50 years to be able to catch up to our current state,” said Ramokhele.
“My view is that we’re going to wake up one day and the network of Johannesburg would have collapsed if we don’t take drastic measures.
“And that is where colleagues, like those sitting in this particular forum, come in. We are of the view that the government alone is not going to be able to fix this.”