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Engineering News editor Terence Creamer discusses the City of Tshwane's plans to procure 1 000 MW of new electricity generation capacity and how it is likely to proceed with the procurement processes for that capacity.

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The City of Tshwane is signalling its intention to proceed with plans to procure and/or revive 1 000 MW of electricity generation capacity by 2026 as part of a strategy aimed at improving security of supply and reducing its dependency on Eskom.
Executive Mayor Cilliers Brink told delegates attending the inaugural Tshwane Energy Summit that the city was seeking to find a way to partner with independent power producers (IPPs), as it was not in a financial position to pursue generation projects on its own.
The strategy being canvassed includes an aspiration to revive generation at the mothballed Pretoria West and Rooiwal coal station sites, where 40-year leases are being proposed, while also pursuing utility-scale renewables generation on greenfield sites within the metropolitan area.
In February, the city issued a request for information to gauge the appetite of IPPs to build alternative and renewable-energy projects and it recently completed an evaluation of the responses, which would be used when drafting a request for proposals (RFP).
It is also in the process of securing the services of a transaction adviser to oversee the prospects of reviving generation from the Pretoria West and Rooiwal sites; transactions that were likely to be far more complex.
This includes a potentially controversial plan for restarting coal generation at Rooiwal, which had a nameplate of 300 MW when it was completed in the early 1970s and where the city argues much of the core infrastructure remains intact, even though the station has not operated for some ten years.
Prospects for a resumption of coal generation at the even older and fire-damaged Pretoria West plant were more remote, with Brink acknowledging that the key asset at both sites was their proximity to the grid networks capable of evacuating power.
The city will, thus, be guided by both the transaction adviser, the appointment of which could be made in August, and the market, with regard to technology options, before issuing an RFP.
"We don't want to restrict the solution upfront. We want to say, this is our infrastructure and be guided by the transaction adviser so that we get the optimal uptake from the market," Brink told Engineering News on the sidelines of the summit.
It is also possible, therefore, that the RFP for greenfield renewable-energy projects will be released separately and in advance of the RFP for Pretoria West and Rooiwal.
No clarity was provided about the potential financial model other than it being tariff-funded, nor whether there was any prospect of Tshwane offering any power purchase agreement guarantees, which have underpinned all the renewables projects procured by national government to date.
Brink acknowledged that the city's procurement ambitions would have to be coupled with supportive policy in the form of a new wheeling framework, which delegates indicated would help lower the risk by allowing IPPs to contract with multiple customers, rather than a financially unstable single buyer.
Recognising this constraint, the executive mayor stressed that his first priority remained the "financial rescue of the city", with a project management office having been set up to collect R6-billion of its R23-billion in outstanding debts in the near term.
"As much as we say we want to become independent of Eskom we understand that in order for us to have a meaningful relationship with IPPs, we also have to restore our own credibility, our own creditworthiness and our financial position."
Besides procuring new utility-scale generation, work is also under way to review Tshwane's feed-in tariff with the aim of making it more attractive to business and household prosumers to sell into the grid following a recent surge in rooftop installations across the region.
The role of prosumers and embedded generators will also feature

Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) on Tuesday released its Bi-Annual Economic and Capacity Survey (BECS) findings, revealing a stark 22% decline from July to December of 23, marking the lowest level since 2019, at 32.
The ongoing downturn persisted into early 2024, dropping further to 30 amid political uncertainty, corruption, and infrastructural constraints, according to Cesa.
The organisation's latest survey sheds light on significant trends and challenges within South Africa's engineering and construction sectors for the latter half of 2023.
CESA CEO Chris Campbell emphasised the critical role of business confidence in driving investment growth.
"Higher levels of business confidence are crucial for investment growth, regardless of interest rates or financing accessibility. A sustained recovery to a neutral level of 50 or higher is necessary to bolster investment levels," he stressed.
The survey underscored the troubling trend of project cancellations, with 41% of respondents reporting tender cancellations in the last six months of 2023, up from 31% in June 2023. Reasons cited ranged from economic uncertainties and budget constraints to community interference and skill shortages, Cesa pointed out.
Campbell warned of significant financial impacts from these cancellations, particularly affecting smaller firms that lacked resources to absorb such losses.
"Project cancellations have a detrimental impact on the sector, particularly on smaller firms that cannot easily absorb these losses. It is imperative to address these issues to stabilise the industry and maintain project momentum," Campbell averred.
Despite these challenges, the survey reported an average 7% year-on-year increase in consulting fees in 2023, with a notable 10% growth in the second half of the year, largely driven by private-sector demand.
However, earnings from national and local government saw a decline, highlighting a dependency on private-sector initiatives to sustain growth.
Looking ahead, the outlook remains mixed for the first half of the year. Larger firms expect earnings to stabilise, while medium-sized firms anticipate a modest increase of 5% to 7%.
The order book to income ratio indicated potential future demand softness, contrasting with reported improvements among medium-sized firms, Cesa noted.
The survey also highlighted a notable increase in private-sector investment, particularly in critical economic infrastructure such as electricity, water, rail and ports. Fixed investment grew by 4.2% year-on-year in 2023, with the private sector contributing an average 5% increase over the past two years.
In contrast, investment by State-owned enterprises declined by 1.8%, following an 8.2% drop in 2022.
Cesa emphasised that the findings of BECS underscored the need for sustained investment in South Africa's critical economic infrastructure. While acknowledging positive signs from increased private-sector involvement, Cesa stressed persisting challenges such as low business confidence, high project cancellation rates, and uneven earnings growth.
"The path forward requires a concerted effort from both the public and private sectors to ensure a steady pipeline of projects, fostering job creation and economic stability. Our improved outlook suggests increased activity in infrastructure design and planning, but the real challenge lies in executing these projects to drive sustained economic growth," Campbell explained.

South Africa's Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) has issued requests for proposal (RFPs) for the construction of two solar-powered seawater desalination plants and a hybrid renewables-battery facility to service its Nelson Mandela Bay ports, in the Eastern Cape.
TNPA is seeking bidders capable of designing, constructing and operating solar-powered seawater desalination plants with a capacity of 0.8 megalitres and 0.5 megalitres of potable water, respectively, for the ports of Port Elizabeth and Ngqura.
The desalination plants would improve the reliability of freshwater supply for port users and bolster their climate-resiliency, the TNPA said in a statement.
The electricity RFP, meanwhile, is for the design, construction and operation of a 7 MW hybrid renewable-energy plant that has a battery energy storage system of 6 MWh at the Port of Ngqura to support the decarbonisation of port operations and improve the reliability and availability of supply.
Earlier this year, TNPA awarded a R60-million contract for the construction of a water desalination plant at the Port of East London, and acting CEO Advocate Phyllis Difeto confirmed that the State-owned company was aiming to ensure security of utilities supply across all ports by 2029.

The newest World Bank Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) report, which places a number of South African ports at the bottom of the list, covers the crisis-ridden 2023 period, and does not take into account the corrective action taken since Transnet has been under new management as part of a recovery and transformation strategy, says Southern African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF) CEO Dr Juanita Maree.
"To contextualise, this was a period at the height of the crisis.
"The timing of its release unjustifiably tarnishes today's developments, casting doubt on the efficacy of robust corrective action underway and the hard work of the recovery teams and the leadership of the National Logistics Crisis Committee - a strong strategic public-private consultative initiative by government that serves as the anchor," says Maree.
"At the same time, we must acknowledge that there are valid points in the report, and we must not simply dismiss it, but rather constructively use it as another building block and join hands to ensure that we improve our container port performance."
Maree says the CPPI is based on a ranking of container port performance - not a score - and, therefore, does not serve as a diagnostic tool to show where a port should improve.
"Moreover, the report uses rank aggregation, combining multiple rankings into a single ranking.
"This is a significant problem arising in many areas, and it is an overly simplified approach to providing a single ranking of a complex system that is a port call," she notes.
"Furthermore, as the World Bank concedes, values are imputed when combinations of port calls and vessel call sizes are missing.
"The authors caution that the inherent risk with this approach is that poor or good performance within just one group will cascade across all call-size groups.
"Therefore, the CPPI is undoubtedly a unidimensional view of port performance. It attempts to examine the system's performance and devise a single index to indicate whether it is good or bad."
Despite this methodology critique, SAAFF believes the report attempts to emphasise that South Africa loses time at outer anchorages, "which the association and Transnet accept".
"Nevertheless, using a vessel's stay duration as the sole measure of container port performance without considering other factors like throughput and handling rates, highlights key obstacles to using the findings to measure container port performance accurately on a comparative basis.
"Furthermore, the World Bank concedes that it is impossible to see from the data whether waiting time is voluntary or forced, and that it is difficult to find a suitable level at which to discount waiting time in this scenario," says Maree.
"We must, therefore, conclude that South African ports were excessively penalised for time lost at anchorage."
A Different Narrative
If port performance is isolated based on time and efficiency, gross crane moves an hour (GCH) at Durban Pier 1 was around 15.8 moves an hour.
At Durban Pier 2, GCH was around 16.4 moves an hour.
This is 33% and 30% below the global average, respectively, but by no means the worst in the world, says Maree.
"Some examples show that the terminals reached 32 GCH in isolated cases, nearing global best practices.
"So, one might argue that a container terminal capable of sometimes achieving global best practices can certainly not be considered the worst in the world.
"But, at the same time, South African port users come from a background where rates of around 25 were relatively common in the not-too-distant past, and this is what makes the current performance so worrying."
Furthermore, there is no mention in the report of the volume or frequency of schedules, adds Maree.
To look at some examples, regional ports included in the study, such as the Port of Maputo, only had 87 vessel calls and only serviced vessel sizes up to 5 000 TEUs.
Another example is the Port of Nacala or Port Sudan, which only had 27 and 26 vessel calls,

Transnet said it's in talks to run additional trains between a port in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape province and the country's commercial hub of Gauteng to better link the two automotive manufacturing hubs.
The state freight rail and ports company has faced withering criticism from carmakers to coal and iron ore miners as its deteriorating rail service has forced an increasing amount of commodities and cars to be transported by trucks. The head of Volkswagen's South African unit has said car companies are in talks with Transnet to improve the line and run privately-operated trains on it.
Transnet in response to queries said it's in talks with the government and funders "to expand the Southern Corridor rail network" to add three 50-wagon trains for use by automotive companies daily between Port Elizabeth in Gqeberha and Gauteng. Later, the state-owned company said, it would expect private companies to invest in rail infrastructure and trains to boost the service.
Companies such as VW and Isuzu Motors currently rely almost entirely on trucks to get their vehicles from their plants near Gqeberha to Gauteng, South Africa's biggest car market. Companies with plants in Gauteng, such as Ford Motor Co. and BMW AG, could use the line to move cars to the port in the coastal city as an alternative to the congested terminal in the city of Durban.
Transnet said it's also in talks with VW "to resurrect the existing rail haulage service" between the carmaker's plant in Kariega, near Gqeberha, and Gauteng. A test train run was delayed by floods in the Eastern Cape, it said.
The state company said it also wants private train operators and investors to help expand shipments of manganese to Port Elizabeth and the nearby port of Ngqura.