As we head towards the Local Government Elections and the country battles another stretch of load shedding – we are again starkly reminded of the critical nexus of energy and information, not only in industry but in our day to day lives. We learn more and more about how past decisions and deviations have brought our national electrical power utility to where it is today – and one can only wonder at the slow turning of the wheels of government that have – almost two years on – still not seen any finality on the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMI4P). We are at least moving forward on REI4P with Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe announcing 25 preferred bidders to develop more than 2 500 MW of solar and wind power which will happen over the next two to three years.

In this October 2021 edition of Electricity + Control we cover the topical issues of Industry 4.0 + IIoT, Energy management + the industrial environment, as well as the always fundamental considerations in industry of Measurement + instrumentation and Safety of plant, equipment + people.

In the context of Industry 4.0 + IIoT, Canninah Mapena, Managing Director of Rockwell Automation in Africa, highlights the benefits of advances in technology and outlines five principles to guide businesses in Africa in adopting new technologies appropriate to their needs and to building their global competitiveness.

Upfront in this September issue of Electricity + Control, Editorial Technical Director Ian Jandrell, in his Comment, reminds us that it’s people who keep our plants working. Remarking on the unexpected news of an explosion on the generator at one of the units at the Medupi Power Station, which only recently reached commercial operation, he reminds us that similar events could happen on any plant and that, no matter how much we automate, instrument and control our plants, at the end of the day it is us, people, who keep the lights on. This underscores again the importance of establishing safe operating protocols and procedures and providing training – on a regular basis – to ensure personnel and particularly plant operators are well practised and prepared to act decisively in times of crisis.

We are seeing the increasingly intense effects of climate change in turbulent weather extremes around the world – one of the reasons that industry globally is looking to switching its energy sources to renewables and accelerating efficiencies as well as streamlining production to reduce waste, advance recycling and reuse, and help clean up our polluted planet, for our own and future generations. Motion plastics specialist igus – and now other partners too – have invested in HydroPRS pioneer Mura Technology, which recently started construction on the world's first commercially operated hydrothermal plastic recycling plant in the UK. Mura Technology’s HydroPRS provides for plastic waste that would otherwise pollute the environment to be chemically recycled back into oil within 25 minutes, and reused as a valuable raw material. We report on this ground-breaking development in Write @ the back in this August issue of Electricity + Control.

It is increasingly clear that the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digitalisation and automation across most industries, opening up new ways of operating and, in many instances, advancing performance efficiencies. This is supported by advances in software, computing and communications technologies enabling real-time visibility into plant and production operations at multiple levels.