Page 14 - AfrElec Week 14

AfrElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AfrElec
OFF-GRID
Senegal to receive $91.5m for rural electrification
Senegal is to receive $91.5m loan from the Exim Bank of the United States to facilitate the export of US engineering and construction services in the rural electrification sector.
The credit guarantee granted to Senegal by the Exim Bank of the United States follows
a promise made in 2019, by the President of the Republic of Senegal. In his end-of-year speech, Macky Sall announced that about $1bn dollars would be invested in the rural electrification process by 2023.
The loan will see 330,000 people connected to independent mini-solar grids in more than 415 villages. The work will be led by Weldy Lamont, a US company exporting renewable energy equipment to Africa, which employs 500 people in 14 states in the US and Senegal.
The Senegalese energy sector is relatively small. Total fossil fuel provision stands at
27 TWh per year, thereby making up nearly 40% of Senegal’s primary energy provision
of which the remainder is nearly entirely biomass (well over 50%) – most of which non- renewable – complemented by some coal and some hydro and solar for renewable generated electricity.
Rural electrification is a major challenge for Senegal. The country has only 33% rural electrification rate and a 65% electrification rate at the national level. The government’s energy ambitions and the support of donors, however, allow Senegalese farmers to keep hope for better electricity coverage.
NUCLEAR
Egypt, Russia seal nuclear fuel deal
The Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority and Russia’s Rosatom TVEL subsidiary, Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant (NCCP), have agreed on a 10 -year contract for the supply of low-enriched nuclear fuel components for Egypt’s ETTR-2 research reactor.
The fuel components include uranium and aluminium items, Rosatom TVEL said in a statement.
ETTR-2 focuses on ‘research in particle physics and material studies, as well as for production of radioisotopes’.
It is located at a nuclear research facility in Inshas in Egypt’s Sharqiya governorate.
TVEL senior vice-president for commerce and international business Oleg Grigoriyev said: “The long-term contract is a logical follow-up to a number of contractual documents for shipments of fuel components to Egypt, successfully fulfilled by NCCP in the past three years.”
According to Rosatom TVEL, the business development prospects in Egypt also embrace supply of nuclear fuel to all four power units of the planned 4,800MW El-Debaa nuclear power plant for its entire operation period.
El-Debaa is the country’s first nuclear power plant and will be located in Egypt’s Matrouh province on the Mediterranean coast.
The company said the fuel contract for the El-Debaa nuclear power plant came into force in 2017.
It is understood the Central Design
& Technological Institute, another
TVEL subsidiary, is involved as a design subcontractor for the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from El-Debaa.
In January, Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA) awarded Australia’s Worley, formerly WorleyParsons, a consultancy services contract for the plant.
ESKOM
Eskom TSO head to head IPP office
Eskom’s grid operator Tshifhiwa Magoro will head the independent power producer’s (IPPs) office, which is responsible for rolling
out the government’s renewable energy IPP programme.
Magoro is the GM of the Eskom system operator and Eskom telecommunications, and is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the SA electricity grid. This includes managing real-time electricity supply and balancing demand.
As of May 1, he will head up the office that oversees the execution of the green-power programme, which has attracted ZAR209bn in investment into more than 112 green- power projects.
The programme has, at times, been a bone of contention for Eskom, which is mandated to buy the power from these projects. Although it passes on the expense to consumers through the electricity tariff, the cash-strapped utility has previously complained about having to bear the expense upfront and, at one point, caused delays in rolling out projects when it refused to sign power purchase agreements.
The office’s mandate, which expired at the end of March this year, has also been extended to March 2023, by which time it is expected to be institutionalised, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) confirmed.
The IPP office was established in 2010 through a memorandum of agreement between the department of energy, the National Treasury and the DBSA.
Magoro replaces Sandra Coetzee who has held the acting position since July last year when the office’s long-serving former CEO, Karen Breytenbach was removed from the post.
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Week 14 09•April•2020