Karpowership, Shell have ‘exclusive deal’
The Istanbul-based ship-to-shore power producer, Karpowership, says its technology solution is well-suited to South Africa’s energy landscape. It is set to provide emergency power to the country for the next 20 years.
Karpowership SA Coega, Karpowership SA Richards Bay and Karpowership SA Saldanha were last month named among eight preferred bidders for the risk mitigation independent power producers procurement programme.
The other preferred bidders are ACWA Power Project DAO, Mulilo Total Coega, Mulilo Total Hydra Storage, Oya Energy Hybrid Facility and Umoyilanga Energy.
Karpowership said: “Powerships are fully self-contained floating power stations that operate on regasified liquefied natural gas [LNG] together with specialised floating storage and regasification units for the LNG and are constructed and immediately available for deployment in South Africa.”
It did not divulge how much the deal would cost, but a recent Council for Scientific and Industrial Research presentation estimated it to be about R10.9billion annually or about R218billion over the 20-year contract.
The vessels are set to arrive in 2022 at Richards Bay, Coega and Saldanha.
Once powerships are sailed into a port, a grid connection is established and the generated electricity is directly fed into the national grid.
“This avoids lengthy construction times and associated risk. South Africa needs a fast, reliable, implementable solution that can immediately mitigate the effects of load shedding. Using LNG, powerships generate electricity at an affordable all-inclusive delivered cost, which includes all capital costs such as fuel, equipment, and all operational and maintenance costs,” Karpowership said.
The vessels are being leased by the project company; they cannot be built in South Africa because of infrastructure constraints. But the company said they would be operated and maintained by local businesses for the duration of the project.
“The 1 220MW [megawatts] to be supplied by Karpowership SA will completely eliminate an entire stage of load-shedding and will go a long way to stopping a second stage,” it said.
The department of mineral resources and energy said the new power will be connected to the grid by August next year.
Karpowership SA and Shell have created a “long-term, exclusive deal” to ensure that South Africa can get competitively priced, “clean” fuel, the company said.
The company said: “Our climate change and air emission specialists have conducted a scientific assessment of the environmental effects of powerships and determined that the impacts are insignificant even when assessed cumulatively against gas projects that are in the process of planning and implementation.”