Annemarie

A brand new study into the future of African power utilities and the challenges they face has highlighted four possible scenarios of what the continent’s energy sector will look like by the year 2030. In the whitepaper, titled: “The Future of Energy and Power Utilities in Africa”, utilities are envisioned to either become “The Lions of Africa”, “Hungry Hyenas”, “An Elephant Herd” or “White Elephants”, with each scenario having different consequences for both the African energy industry at large as well as the consumer. The research project was conducted by the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria, in collaboration with Clarion Energy, organisers of flagship energy events such as African Utility Week, Future Energy East Africa, Future Energy Nigeria and the Utility CEO Forum series - meetings and events that share ideas, encourage networking and facilitate business partnerships across the continent. Can utilities remain relevant? “The future of power and energy in Africa is at a significant junction” says Natalie Bacon, programme director at African Utility Week, “and African states and the power stakeholders operating within this sector realise that the impact of providing universal access to affordable energy will not only lead to accelerated economic development but significant social improvements. Yet, to achieve universal access executives have many strategic decisions ahead of them.” She explains: “hitherto business as usual for utilities has meant bulk energy production and distribution through coal-fired power plans, centralised grids and public sector monopolies. However, this is quickly coming under threat from new models of energy production and distribution. The four scenarios outlined by the study will help utilities and the wider industry visualise what African utilities could look like in 2030 and try to answer the important question of how utilities can remain relevant, effective and lead the African …

Harvesting icebergs and learning from forests on how to run a city were offered as solutions to Cape Town’s water woes on Wednesday at a power and water utility conference underway in Cape Town. Salvage expert Nick Sloane addressed delegates at the African Utility Week conference during a keynote session on Wednesday where solutions from nature were explored to address increasing energy and water constraints. “It sounds like a crazy idea but if we break it down, it is not so crazy after all,” Sloane started his address. His address followed director of water and sanitation in the City of Cape Town Peter Flower’s presentation on Tuesday on the water crisis in the city. Flower told delegates the city still needs to reduce consumption to 450 million litres of water per day to keep Day Zero at bay. With the current usage at 500 million litres per day, the situation remains dire despite measures employed by the city to reduce consumption. According to Captain Sloane the answer may just be in “mother nature’s icebergs” – a total of 140 000 icebergs to be specific - drifting in the southern oceans and melting. Harvesting icebergs, he said, can help provide at least 20% of Cape Town’s water needs. He told delegates icebergs break off in Antarctica and hold some of the purest quality water that is between 15 000 and 20 000 years old. “About 2000 million tons of ice are breaking off every year,” he said. The idea is to use the current system to guide these icebergs towards the Cape. “So, they are coming our way, we just need to know how to deal with it.” Sloane said the iceberg can be captured in the area round Gough island and will ultimately have to be guided and moored about 40 km offshore from St Helena island to be harvested. He said they will then have to “create a saucer to capture the melting water that can deliver up to 60 million litres per day”. With milling this volume can increase to 150 million litres a day that is then pumped into tankers and …

Mozambican utility EDM (Electricidade de Moçambique), Azuri Technology, Siemens and two water sector pioneers were some of the big winners at the African Utility Week Industry Awards that took place in Cape Town on Wednesday evening. Hundreds of power and water professionals gathered to honour the top projects and people in the industries on the continent in the fifth edition of the awards gala as part of the African Utility Week conference and exhibition. EDM scored a double win with the award for the Power Utility of the Year as well as the Outstanding Contribution Award in Power for Dr Mateus Magala, EDM’s Chairman and CEO. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Energy, Ambassador Thembisile Majola, was the guest of honour at the awards gala which featured two new categories, namely Energy/Water Reporter of the Year and Digital Solution of the Year. Lifetime Achievement Award Winner: Prof Roland Schulze, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Roland Schulze pioneered formal scientific hydrological studies at South African universities by piloting the country’s first hydrology degree course in the early 1980s and then seeing the discipline grow from that of a single lecturer with a handful of students to a fully-fledged Centre for Water Resources Research. Schulze has initiated and been involved in national and international level hydrological research for the past 50 years, and in applied climate change research in the fields of agriculture and water for the past 30 years. “I’m proud not only for myself but also for the many colleagues and my family that have helped me achieve this,” Prof Schulze said after receiving his award. “My vision for the water industry in general is that we become more efficient in the use of water, particularly in light of population increases and climate change, which might cause us to have less water than we are used to in the future. And that means efficiency in the main sectors that use a lot of water such as agriculture, industry …

Approximately seven million prepaid electricity meters in South Africa need to be reset before November 2024 as the system that runs the credit tokens will run out of numbers at this time and all existing meters will stop accepting credit tokens. The South African metering standards industry body, Standard Transfer Specification Association (STSA), has embarked on an awareness programme to inform utilities to upgrade their vending systems to STS600 and visit each meter in its region to clear the memory and change the meter key before November 2024. Don Taylor, director of STS Association, explains: “the token identifier (TID) is calculated as the number of minutes that have elapsed since a defined base date of 1993 up to the time of creating the token. The TID has a limited range and will run out in November 2024, at which point all existing prepayment meters will stop accepting credit tokens. In order to circumvent this issue, the memory of each meter needs to be cleared of all stored TIDs and its cryptographic key needs to be changed before 2024.” The new range of TIDs will then start from a new base date of 2014 and run out in 2045, thus extending the useful functional life of the meter. “In order to do this key change,” Mr Taylor explains, “it is necessary that each meter has to be physically visited, which can be performed either by dedicated employees of the utility or by the end customer.” Concerned utilities may leave this too late “There is thus a six-year window,” he continues, “within which the utilities have to complete this programme. Because we are concerned that utilities may leave this too late, we are embarking on an awareness programme by reaching out to all STS users and providing a platform that will facilitate technical support and guidance to users during the implementation of the TID rollover programme. We aim to establish a website for this purpose where users can interact by discussion of issues. In addition we are embarking …

“Nuclear energy is certainly not any more expensive than any other energy source” says nuclear expert Dr Anthonie Cilliers, explaining that “the large 9600MW nuclear programme has created an impression of a single expensive mega-project, when in fact the purpose of the fleet approach was to drive down costs over time and increase the learning rate. This should be broken up into smaller chunks, for example, should two nuclear reactors be added to the current plant at Koeberg, the cost would be no more than the guarantees already provided by treasury for the current IPP programme, whilst two nuclear reactors would produce more units of electricity per year (and more reliably) than the units on the IPP programme.” He adds: “I agree that South Africa’s fiscus is constrained at the moment, I believe this will change and when it does we need to be prepared. If we cannot afford nuclear new build we cannot afford any new build. We also have to remember that the new IRP has not been gazetted and with an outdated IRP, I find the approval of any energy projects (including nuclear) irrational.” Nuclear Power Africa Dr. Anthonie Cilliers is the National Coordinator of SAN-NEST (South African Nuclear Education, Science and Technology) the R&D Programme Manager: Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR) and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. A regular commentator and speaker at African Utility Week, he returns this year as a panellist during the Nuclear Power Africa conference at the event from 15-17 May in Cape Town. “Nuclear is certainly part of the energy mix in Africa” says Daniel Njoroge Butti, Energy Economist at the Karatina University in Kenya, another expert who will share his views at African Utility Week and asked whether there is appetite for investors to fund nuclear energy projects, he replies: “the definitive answer is YES.” With regards to costs he explains that “in my view, nuclear energy has significantly high initial …