Energy Management

The new InnoVent Diaz onshore windfarm in Namibia will have an energy capacity of 44 MW and will produce 230 GWh of renewable electricity per year, once commissioned by the end of 2025. The facility, owned by InnoVent, is located near the port town of Lüderitz, in the Karas region of Namibia.

Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and developers venturing into South Africa’s renewable energy sector face a challenging regulatory landscape characterised by uncertainty in securing grid connections and considerable development costs. This is according to Stefan Bothma, Senior Project Developer at Sustainable Power Solutions (SPS), who notes that Eskom’s approval processes, coupled with complex environmental and land use procedures, contribute to the complexities that IPPs and supplementary power suppliers face.

Many businesses investing in solar energy assume that once the system is installed, savings and efficiency will follow automatically. This is not always the case.

Africa is increasingly harnessing its solar energy potential. In 2024, the continent added 2.5 GW of new solar generation capacity, with utility-scale projects making up 72% of this growth. To support this continuing growth, new computational software has been introduced to the solar energy market. Developed by 7SecondSolar, AUTOPV is designed to empower energy engineers to optimise and accelerate solar farm development through design automation. 

NYSE-listed GE Vernova recently announced the successful completion of the modernisation of global energy and chemical company Sasol’s Secunda power plant in Mpumalanga. The project included the replacement of the existing pre-combustor system with a new DLN1+ combustor supplemented by the Fuel Gas Module (FGM) skid to increase the operational efficiency of the two installed 9E gas turbines and reduce carbon emissions.