Gwede Mantashe is a South African politician who served as the national chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC). He is also a former chairperson of the South African Communist Party and a former secretary-general of the ANC. And he is the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy.
If I needed help with union matters, if I needed to understand the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, or if I needed education on the difference between socialism and communism, who better to ask than Mantashe? However, the latest offering from his department shows that there is not much expertise in the matter of how (and I am quoting now) “to alleviate the electricity supply constraints and to reduce the extensive use of diesel-based peaking electrical generators in the medium to long term”. The department lists eight projects that will be adopted in this regard.
Part of this risk mitigation is the acceptance of three powerships (Turkish Karpowerships) that will be moored alongside at Coega, Richards Bay and Saldanha Bay. A bulletin explains: “The power is generated on the ship, which evacuates the power at the allocated voltage. A power line is then taken from the ship to a transmission tower and the transmission towers are integrated into the grid.” As simple as that, bra.
It is further stated that “these eight projects will inject a total private-sector investment amount of R45-billion to the South African economy”. All this brings me to mention Wimbledon tennis champion John McInroe. When an umpire called one of his shots “out”, he would yell: “You can’t be 88&%%%$ serious!” And, dear readers, in the matter of powerships, you can’t be . . . serious. Each ship is supposed to supply 200 MW, more or less, using liquefied natural gas or heavy fuel oil (HFO). Now, since none of the above ports has a 200 MW supply, we will have to build a 132 kV substation and power line to accept the power from the ships. Which will require an environmental-impact assessment. The ships will make noise (a lot), which will require a noise-impact assessment. Will need National Energy Regulator of South Africa authorisation. Costs per kilowatt hour are reputedly R1.70/kWh. So it doesn’t look brilliant but it doesn’t look too bad, does it? Waaal!
South Africa doesn’t have oil resources and so the ships burning HFO will have to get it from other countries. The figure of R1.70/kWh may well be the cost of the fuel and power generation, but is this if consumers (we in South Africa) supply the fuel or if the ship supplies the fuel? Put differently, HFO costs about $300/t. This is R5/𝓵. The fuel cost per kilowatt hour is thus about R1.20/kWh. Would the ship seriously sell power for a R0.50 mark-up, which includes other costs and profit? Not very likely.
But the elephant in the room, the whistle in the ballroom, the crack in the china, is: Why rent some ships, build a 132 kV line and pay the Turks for power? We can do it ourselves and just as quickly and much more cheaply.
Now, Mr Minister, listen: all over South Africa, there are organisations which have standby gensets. For example, all the mines, large commercial enterprises, data centres – many, many hundreds of gensets. What you do is connect each genset to a synchronising controller and the Internet. Then, before load-shedding, a central authority starts them all and gets them to supply power, thus avoiding load-shedding. The owners are rewarded with a rate per kilowatt hour (say R1.70) and a monthly availability charge.
Great idea, huh? Will it happen? No, I say, it never will. Mantashe won’t read this column, even if it is written by an electrical engineer with 35 years’ power system experience. He’ll listen to his advisers, none of whom has ever run a power system and all of whom have some vested interests. A real pity; he could learn something.