Energy

Toyota dealers are using less energy.

Credit: Toyota SA

In terms of Toyota’s Dealer Environmental Risk Audit Programme (DERAP), dealers do audits twice a year to check their compliance with various environmental and energy standards. One checkpoint relates to generating less energy. The national winner of the DERAP award installed 288 solar panels on the roof, uses LED lights in the workshop and natural light is utilised via louvres.

The managing director of Illovo Sugar SA, Mamongae Mahlare, has told the Sunday Times that the sugar industry is in real need of some other source of income to offset tough times. Selling energy to the grid (and investigating biofuel and bio-energy) are “key” to the sector’s future, she told the newspaper. At the company’s

Eswatini mill, Ubombo, it has a commercial supply agreement with the Eswatini Electricity Company.

The province’s other sugar giant, Tongaat Hulett, produces between 12MW and 14MW of power at its mills and believes that the national sugar industry could generate between 700MW and 900MW.

A 17MW biomass project represents the province’s only approved project in terms of the national Renewable Energy

Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).

An open cycle gas turbine plant at Shakaskraal in the iLembe

District Municipality can be converted to gas-fired technology, a method which energy planners are encouraging. The 670MW plant came on stream in 2017. Its project company, Avon Peaking Power, is jointly owned by a community trust, Mitsui (Japan), Legend Power Solutions (South Africa) and ENGIE of France.

As part of the provincial government’s strategy to boost regional development, the iLembe District has been named as an Industrial Economic Hub (IEH) for the renewable energy sector.

Khanyisa Projects has set up 26 biodigesters which produce gas for cooking at Ndwedwe in the iLembe District. The project forms part of the Working for Energy programme of the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) which promotes the use of sustainable clean energy in rural areas.

The Richards Bay Industrial Development Zone (RBIDZ) has been named as the site for 2 000MW liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in terms of national government’s gas-topower plan. RBIDZ is also the site of a new biomass plant.

Biomass technology is at the centre of the conversion scheme of South African Breweries at its Prospecton plant south of Durban. Methane-gas emissions from a nearby effluent plant are piped to the plant where they are converted to electricity. ■

ONLINE RESOURCES

National Department of Energy: www.energy.gov.za National Energy Regulator: www.nersa.org.za South African National Energy Development Institute: www.sanedi.org.za SECTOR INSIGHT Sugar producers want to sell electricity.