KARPOWERSHIP, a Turkish company that provides electricity from vessels moored offshore, said it had spoken to the South African government and the state utility about providing power to reduce shortages in the country.
The company, a subsidiary of Istanbul-based Karadeniz Holding, has surveyed the South African coastline for suitable sites to drop anchor, Sales Director Patrick O’Driscoll said in Johannesburg last week. As much as 2 000 megawatts (MW) of power could be added to the grid from five potential locations, he said.
Eskom, which generates about 95 percent of the country’s power, implemented almost-daily rolling blackouts in February. The company spends about R1 billion a month on diesel burned to constantly run turbines designed only for use at peak times.
Eskom said on Thursday it had about 4 300MW of capacity offline for planned maintenance, and about 6 900MW unavailable because of unforeseen events.
O’Driscoll said he had met with South Africa’s Department of Energy and Eskom, “however they don’t have a policy as such that says ‘we can go buy power generation on this basis’.” The question of whether to use the ships could be best addressed by the war room headed by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa set up to address the energy crisis, he said.
Karpowership had seven floating power plants in operation and was having its first 500MW vessel built, O’Driscoll said. After supplying electricity to Iraq and Lebanon, Karpowership has agreed on financial terms to supply Ghana.
Karpowership would supply 450MW of electricity to the West African nation from two ships that burn heavy fuel oil or natural gas, O’Driscoll said.
The state Electricity Company of Ghana, or ECG, which produces less than half of the 3 000MW its power plants are designed to deliver, has been rationing supplies to Accra for as long as 24 hours at a time since January. ECG is struggling to keep the lights on because of a shortage of gas to burn in its power plants and low water levels at its 1-gigawatt hydropower dam.
The cost of operating the vessels should be less than 15c a kilowatt hour, about half the cost of operating open-cycle gas turbines, O’Driscoll said. – Bloomberg