Energy experts Ted Blom and Dr Grové Steyn, who serves on the Presidential Task Team on Eskom, were part of a panel discussion at the  African Utility Week and  POWERGEN Africa conference and exhibition in Cape Town. It covered issues relating to the future of Eskom, the planned unbundling of the utility and energy in a future with climate change. Ted Blom did not hold back on what his thoughts were on the current situation with Eskom, he had the following to say: “ Eskom’s

This week, the Austrian ambassador South Africa officially launched two new solar power systems in Johannesburg. The SOLTRAIN projects includes a district heating plant for Wits University residences and a solar process heating plant for the Klein Karoo International tannery. The Wits Junction district heating project combines solar, co-generation, and gas heating technologies. This project would serve 14 student residence buildings that house 1,103 students supplied by hot

NERSA has recently approved and allowed a tariff increase this year, 2019/2020. Eskom direct customers having an increase of 13.87% and municipal clients having an increase of 15.63% effective as of the first of July, 2019. However, these are not the only increases residents should be aware about. Major cities around South Africa has tabled their budgets. We'll be comparing how 3 of South Africa's biggest cities fair in terms of the various increases residents can expect

Eskom has seeked legal advice in response to news that it will be faced by a class action lawsuit by law firm, De Beers attorneys. They invite businesses and other commercial interests who has suffered financial loss, to join them in strengthening their case against the state-owned entity. According to Constitutional Law Expert Advocate Michael Osborne, in the main, it is not possible to sue the state for failure to provide essential services. However, there are exceptions.

Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan along with Eskom board chairman, Jabu Mabuza and a few others has recently briefed the media with regards to the current status of the country's electricity supply as well as what the plan is going forward. In the briefing, some very interesting admissions were made with Gordhan starting out the briefing with an apology for the current state of events at Eskom, and the recent prolonged load-shedding episode. He mentioned in this

Eskom has been approved an average annual increase for it's Eskom direct customers. That increase has taken effect as of the 1st of April and see's direct customers coughing up an extra 13.87% more for their electricity purchases going forward. Municipal clients will see an extra 15.63% average increase in their tariff, this will be effective as of the 1st of July, 2019. These increases comes as a result of NERSA approving the Eskom application, as they seek to claw back t

Powertime and UBU.world, has joined forces to bring you a great opportunity to get free rewards, goods and services! What is UBU.World you may ask? ProjectUBU is a network effects ecosystem that unlocks trapped asset value and distributes it to participants. It consists of four primary components: The  UBU , a freely issued digital token of exchange that derives its value from underutilised assets; The treasury, an algorithmically programmed blockchain issuer of  UBUs ; Th

Mozambique has recently been hit with a massive tropical storm. Cyclone Idai, as it has been dubbed, lashed Mozambique with strong winds and widespread rain. Wind speeds reached in excess of 70km/h, touching landfall near the city in Beira, in the Sofala Province. The storm also touched parts of Zimbabwe and northern parts of South Africa. The storm has claimed the lives of many, with the death toll rising to an estimated 115. According to the United Nations, the storm has af

Eskom has issued a statement yesterday afternoon, stating that the risk of load-shedding will remain high for the next couple of days. We have not had instances of load-shedding since the state-owned power utility systematically switched off our lights in mid February. Energy usage is set to increase in the next few weeks with the change of season coming up. With the weather becoming colder, this is sure to have a negative impact on the power grid and energy generating plant

The annual budget speech was tabled by finance minister Tito Mboweni in parliament yesterday, where he has made announcement about how South Africa will approach the coming financial year. This included the stance of treasury on state-owned companies. In his speech, he mentioned that the struggling utility Eskom, will be allocated an amount of R69bn over three years to help it with it's service debts. But he stresses the fact that this does not mean that government will take

The situation at Eskom seem to be hitting new lows every other week. The past two weeks has seen the energy utility reintroduce the public to candlelit dinners and days spent running up a sweat in the February summer heat with no fan or air-conditioning. Eskom surprised when it suddenly changed the advisory alert for load-shedding from stage 2 to stage 4. This caused huge alarms and upset many businesses, causing millions of rands in loss daily. While load-shedding is somethi

Eskom has said that stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented as of Sunday, 10th of February, from 1pm to 10pm and has announced that we'll experience rotational load-shedding again, today (11th February, 2019) from 9:00am till 22:00pm tonight. This came directly from a press release, through their spokesperson, Khulu Phasiwe. The energy utility has not had to implement load-shedding since the 9th of December, although there has been threats and signs that we could once again

At the SONA 2019, South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa announced a very dramatic and bold decision to remodel the ailing state power utility Eskom. The plan is to provide financial support and splitting it into three seperate state-owned entities, dealing with generation, transmission and distribution. This after Eskom suffered major financial losses, debt and huge operational problems. Ramaphosa made mention of the fact that this would allow each segment to manage it's c

Approximately seven million prepaid electricity meters in South Africa need to be reset before November 2024 as the system that runs the credit tokens will run out of numbers at this time and all existing meters will stop accepting credit tokens. Don Taylor, director of STS Association, says: “the token identifier (TID) is calculated as the number of minutes that have elapsed since a defined base date of 1993 up to the time of creating the token. The TID has a limited rang

The department of trade and industry hosted a round table discussion at the Mining Indaba 2019, which is the world's largest mining investment conference. At this round table discussion, minister of trade and industry, Rob Davies, had some very interesting points and news to share about the troubling state-owned enterprised. He shed some insight with regards to the current state of Eskom, saying that not only is Eskom facing dire, potentially disastrous financial trouble b

South Africa has recently been hit with powercuts with state-owned power utility struggling to handle demand due to the pressing issue with their under fire coal stations. Many of these stations are struggling with dwindling coal reserves which impacts their ability to produce sufficient power to sustain the grid. The situation has been relieved slightly due to the powercuts although it might make a comeback after mid-Jan, with many factories and businesses reopening after th

The current state of climate change is dire, global warming is increasing at an alarming rate over the past decades/millennia. Earth orbiting satellites and other technological advances have recently shed light and have aided scientist in seeing just how bad the situation has become. What are the facts? So what exactly causes global warming? This occurs as a result of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases causes the Earth to warm. According an article by NASA, the avera

Eskom can not seem to stay out of the headlines these days and in this article we would like to articulate the seriousness of the extreme incline in tariffs over the past few years and all this despite the state owned company desperately struggling with infrastructure externally as well as internal structures. The price for electricity has dramatically outmatched inflation over the past decade. Eskom recently won a court case which would allow them to recover losses or 'unde

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa, have begun their annual public hearings recently which will run over three weeks. The first of which has taken place at Cape Town, 15th of January 2019, where members of the public argued against the state-owned company, Eskom's 45% tariff hike, 15% annual increase, over three years, meanwhile also applying for the recovery of losses made during the 2017/2018 financial year. The proceedings took place at the Cape Sun hotel, which

A new solar power plant has recently been launched in the Northern Cape, close to Upington. It is said that this plant would be able to create 100MW of energy and supply this to about 100 000 households. The Karoshoek Solar One project as it is aptly named,  is part of the goverment's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme and will assist when Eskom is forced to institute load-shedding as a result of it's underfire coal stations.   Unlike a tr