NEWS & MEDIA

The Mozambican cement factory Limak Cementos SA’s recently inaugurated a 4.8 MW on-site gas-to-power plant in Matola, Mozambique. The project, which is part of the Turkish-owned group’s global initiative to achieve its environmental goals, is supplied by the Mozambique natural gas company and a subsidiary of Gigajoule, Matola Gas Company (MGC). It provides Limak with an economical, stable, and reliable source of electricity.

Reliable electricity supply is even more important for South African firms that are regularly exposed to rotational power cuts or curtailment, unlike their Mozambican counterparts. Converting the favourable regulatory changes to projects on the ground depend on more natural gas becoming available to the South African market.

Users dependent on renewable energy sources must also balance their renewable energy with energy from dispatchable sources. Other than the fact that the electricity cost from utilities is likely to continue increasing, behind-the-meter on-site power generation or provision of available power is the only way to mitigate against load shedding or curtailment.

The only way to ‘loadshed-proof’ oneself is to generate power on-site behind the municipal, or Eskom, meter, rather than to buy power that needs to be wheeled across the system, unless exceptions are made to the current load-shedding protocols.

The concern is that the high price and negative environmental impact of LPG and diesel make them unfavourable options. There are also supply constraints in the region. Natural gas is the cheaper than these alternatives.

Realistically, this leaves only one alternative – natural gas. Natural gas is used globally to provide both a stable source of power, but also to balance and support the large-scale implementation of renewable energy generation projects and their intermittent nature.