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South Africa’s Gauteng plans partnerships for coal-fired power

South Africa’s Gauteng province, home to the country’s economic capital of Johannesburg, plans to work with municipalities to return some coal-fired power plants to service as the main electricity utility struggles to meet demand.

“We have been working with municipalities to finalize plans to bring in an additional 1,200 megawatts of electricity by increasing generation capacity of the current coal-fired power stations” in Tshwane at Rooiwal and Pretoria West and the Kelvin facility in Johannesburg, an e-mailed copy of Premier David Makhura’s state-of-the-province speech showed on Monday.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which generates about 95 percent of South Africa’s electricity, is struggling to meet demand after it failed to adequately invest in generation in the 20 years following the country’s first democratic elections. The company has rationed power for 13 days this month as part of plans to prevent a total collapse of the grid serving the continent’s second-biggest economy. The cuts have curbed production and forced businesses to shut doors at peak times.

“There are no time frames; these are existing that are not running at full capacity,” Thabo Masebe, a spokesman for the province, said by phone. The plants in Tshwane, the municipality that includes cities such as the capital, Pretoria, “can easily produce 1,200 megawatts” when they’re running at full capacity, he said.
Province’s Options

The province’s assistance may include an investment in the power plants, or partnerships with the private sector, Masebe said.

Kelvin, with capacity to produce 600 megawatts of electricity, is the only independently owned plant in South Africa supplying City Power, Johannesburg’s energy utility, according to its website. The facility, which is controlled by Nedbank Ltd.’s Nedbank Capital unit and Investec Bank Ltd. and is for sale, provides about 10 percent of the city’s needs through a 20-year agreement signed in 2001. It’s output averaged about 214 megawatts in the eight months through August last year.

The province plans to install roof-top solar panels on all government-owned buildings in the region, Makhura said in the speech. It estimates there are 8 million square meters (86 million square feet) of space suitable for this, enabling 300 megawatts to 500 megawatts of electricity generation, he said.



source: http://www.bloomberg.com