MINING operations in South Africa depend on baseload electricity and a secure energy supply is critical. | Supplied
Mining companies are pulling out all the stops to find alternative ways to generate power and keep their miners safe amid rolling power outages as power utility Eskom instituted load shedding Stage 6 on Tuesday.
Business Report spoke to experts in the mining industry to find out how they were surviving with the pressures of load shedding.
Anglo American said Eskom played an essential role in the lives of all South Africans.
Anglo American mining operations depended on baseload electricity and a secure energy supply was critical, Kunene said.
However, Anglo's operations had back-up power generation to ensure employee safety in the case of load shedding.
"This back-up power generation also enables the controlled and safe shutdown of equipment. In addition, operations have emergency-response plans that detail procedures in the event of load shedding. This includes the safe extraction of employees, shutdown procedures, and communications," she said.
However, it was clear that electricity supply disruption had an adverse impact on operations.
"We continue to support efforts addressing energy security through the relevant forums – such as the Energy Intensive Users Group, the Minerals Council, and as part of the BLSA as Eskom works to improve the availability and reliability of its generation fleet," she said.
Kunene said Anglo had several pilot projects in the pipeline to help it address energy disruptions at its operations.
"We recently entered into a partnership with EDF Renewables to form a new jointly owned company, Envusa Energy, to develop a regional renewable energy ecosystem (RREE) in South Africa.
"As part of the agreement, Envusa Energy is launching a mature pipeline of more than 600 MW of wind and solar projects in South Africa – a significant first step towards developing an ecosystem that is expected to generate 3-5 GW of renewable energy by 2030," she said.
Anglo was also developing a planned 100MW solar PV project at Mogalakwena, expected to be operational by 2023, which would provide about 25% of the Mogalakwena complex's daytime electricity demand.
"We also integrating green hydrogen production to replace diesel use in mine haulage trucks," she said.
Impala Platinum (Implats) spokesperson Johan Theron said all the mines in the country were impacted on a daily basis, directly related to the power available from Eskom.
He said Implats did not have generators.
"We manage available power as best we can by prioritising mining, reducing power on our furnaces where we have spare capacity to recover lost production over time when more power becomes available," he said.
Northam Platinum spokesperson Marion Brower said Northam and other mining companies had been dealing with load shedding for many years now and had worked hard at improving power efficiencies in their operations.
In its 2022 Sustainability report, Northam said it had plans in place to increase electricity generation at its operations, through a variety of renewable energy initiatives.
In the group's Booyesendal and Eland mines, two 1-megawatt (MW) solar arrays were installed in 2022 on rooftops and carports. The development of a 10MW solar farm to provide electricity to the metallurgical complex in Zondereinde had started.
"The group has secured exclusive rights to, and is negotiating power purchase agreements with two wind farm developers that could provide as much as 1000 GWh per year of electrical energy, approximately 50% of our current power usage," the report said.
The Minerals Council South Africa head of communications Allan Seccombe said its members had about six and a half gigawatts of renewable energy projects that were either under construction or in planning or an application with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).
"These are worth more than R100 billion. Eskom had said that it wants about six gigawatts of extra power and that it can do maintenance property, and our members have almost exactly that ready to go. It's just getting through the regulatory process," he said.
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