The South African Wind Atlas (WASA) project The WASA project constitutes one of the most critical elements of South Africa’s renewable energy efforts due to its contribution to the repository of knowledge about the scale and location of our wind resources. In his keynote address at the tenth Wind Atlas for South Africa (WASA) seminar […]
As the urgency to take bold climate action grows, new analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) finds that scaling-up renewable energy combined with electrification could deliver more than three quarters of the energy-related emission reductions needed to meet global climate goals. According to the latest edition of IRENA’s Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap […]
The French multinational company Quadran International has through its subsidiary Quadran Brasil, placed an order for the 206 MW Serrote wind park to be located at the municipality of Trairí, in the state of Ceará. The contract includes the supply and installation of 49 V150-4,2 MW wind turbines with a 125-meter hub height. The power […]
The University of Cape Town’s Energy Research Centre recently undertook an alternative technical assessment of South Africa’s electricity future to inform debate on IRP 2018, South Africa’s latest electricity plan, which is due to be released shortly. The authors used a similar modelling methodology, with the addition of an economic model to account for key […]
A new power generation technology could provide baseload power while reducing CO2 emissions. Many countries have accepted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change. The agreement, which came into force on 4 November 2016, seeks to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by […]
Speaking at a breakfast meeting at the recent Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Nkululeko Buthelezi, the interim chairperson of the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI), said that South Africa’s economy is energy intensive and since the mining sector is a member of the Energy Intensive User Group (EIUG), it is important that clean […]
GE says it intends to intensify its focus on the growing renewable energy market by consolidating all of the company’s renewable and grid assets into a single, simplified renewable energy business. Global demand for renewable power generation and the associated grid integration continues to increase globally with renewable capacity additions of 178 GW accounting for […]
The chemical industry relies heavily on energy for all production processes, from petrochemical to pharmaceuticals to common everyday items. The availability of cheap electricity from renewable energy sources stands to revolutionise the industry, and replace depletable feedstock with renewable material, using surplus electricity from renewable sources. The chemical industry is the largest industrial user of […]
Electrical power generation can make use of several biomass processes, including direct combustion, combustion of gas derived from fermentation or gasification, and combustion of pyrolysis fuel. Thermal gasification and pyrolysis are seen as the most promising technologies for the generation of electricity from biomass. Biofuels are fuels produced directly or indirectly from organic material or […]
As horizontal-shaft wind turbines (HAWTs) increase in size, they become more visually and audibly disturbing. This limits the use of the energy resource of wind in cities as even small turbines of a few tens of kW capacity require tall masts and are deemed visually unpleasant. The challenge to produce a wind turbine with the […]
