South Africa’s Minister of Energy, Dikobe Ben Martins, and Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, officially launched the commissioning phase of furthering the Coega Development Corporation (CDC) investor projects on Sunday 9th March at the CDC Business Center in the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ). They announced that the nation will hold “greener” projects with two companies.

This is the second phase of the investment initiatives which is taking place in the Coega IDZ after several international companies, including Powerway, have already set up their manufacturing plants and are ready to start the production in the short term.

During Martins’ speech and in reference to the Renewable Energy Programmes currently in place in South Africa, he underlined that the DoE and Minister of Trade and Industry are working very closely with each other to keep promoting the localization and assuring that the main components of the different energy technologies are produced locally in order to guarantee the further growth of local industrialization and job opportunities in South Africa. This can be achieved in particular in the Coega IDZ where there is a great potential for the further development of the local manufacturing.

There are at present only two companies in the Coega IDZ that are specializing in the renewable energy sector: Powerway PV SA, with its JV with JA-Powerway and Sungrow-Powerway, plus the Powerway Engineering that supplies mounting structures. Its annual production reaches 150MW/year. DCD Wind Towers, a subsidiary of an international manufacturing and engineering company, which targeted itself to become the first South African supplier of the main wind turbine components, including base, tower and blades.

The Conference at the CDC headquarter took place just a few days after the public apologies from the CEO of Eskom, Mr. Brian Dames, in relation to the approximately 3,000 MW shortfall that forced the state power utility to announce load shedding on Thursday 6th March for the first time since 2008 in order to save the country from having the blackout.

South Africa has been on tight power supply since the 2008 load shedding, and the delay in the commissioning of the 4,800MW coal-fired Medupi power station did not yet help Eskom with the power cut problem.

In this regard, Honourable Minister Martins declared that the current renewable energy projects, assisted by Independent Power Producers (IPP), will help the country by alleviating the problem of load shedding in the near future.

Photo Credit: Powerway