-Edited by Bev Mortimer- At least 500 entities, such as hospitals and police stations in South Africa,will benefit from Chinese donations to enable them to have uninterrupted, alternative power supply and shield them from the effects of load shedding.
To this effect, a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with eight Chinese entities and the South African Minister in the Presidency for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has been signed. The donations include generators, power supply vehicles and off-grid PV energy storage supply systems, Dr Ramokgopa on the side lines of the Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, South Africa yesterday.
“We exchanged letters in relation to technical equipment that will assist us to provide sustainable electricity to some of the major public installations like clinics, hospitals and police stations. They are going to get 552 of those units and 450 of them are already on the way.
“It means that +500 public facilities will now have access to uninterrupted alternative supply. Thank you to the Chinese for the generous contribution.
Dr Ramokgopa said equipment ranges from 6kw up to 200kw,and can support a clinic and a medium sized hospital so this is true relief to the South African people,” he said.
The South African government has already moved to exempt some 76 hospitals from load- shedding with work underway to shield at least 46 others from rolling power cuts being implemented in the country.
The Minister said Chinese entities have valuable experience and technology that can assist Eskom and by extension, the country. The MoC was entered into by Ramokgopa on behalf of the South African government and these Chinese entities:
State Grid Corporation of China
China-Africa Development Fund
China Energy International Group
China General Nuclear Power Corporation
China National Electric Engineering Company, Ltd
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
TBEA CO, LTD.
Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organisation
“They experienced a similar problem to what are experiencing now. They also have the biggest coal generation capacity of any country in the world. They have got the biggest installed renewable energy capacity of any country in the world – about 688GW.
“The amount of renewables they have is twelve times the size of Eskom. They are sitting on extensive amounts of liquidity. We can tap into that financing which is concessional and cheaper than any other. They also have the biggest installed capacity of nuclear of any country in the Dr Ramokgopa continued.
“Even before today, almost all of them have been helping us on the generation side and have already generated a number of reports on how best we can improve the issues of performance of the coal fired powered stations and also reduce the emissions levels, on how to reduce the technical losses on the grid and also on the transmission side and what is required in relation to planning and accommodating new renewables on the grid,” he said.
On whether this agreement will remove load shedding, the Minister replied: “When I came into office, President Cyril Ramaphosa said we are short of 6000MW. Since March when we were appointed, we have added 4000MW. At Tutuka there’s a potential… there’s three units that must come on stream, they’ll give us 1680MW. We are going to fire one unit at Kusile in October, 800MW. We are going to fire three units… we are getting 2400MW. That gives you 8940MW or so.
“But we have not resolved load shedding. The first phase is to ensure we get those megawatts. We must build sufficient capacity to allow the economy of the country to grow at the desired rate and the rate of growth of new generation capacity must surpass the rate of economic growth,” he said.
