The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register here.
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/bushveld_minerals/news/rns/story/xlgk4jr
Your share purchases haven't funded anything to do with Bushveld's business, the companies that they get to put cash into the business are what has allowed the size of Bushveld to increase, none of us investing in the stock exchange did.
The third contributor is the nearly R10bn in tax-breaks for households and businesses to install rooftop solar arrays which Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced in his recent annual Budget Speech. Whilst there have been some criticisms, the scheme is certainly a small step in the right generation.
Finally, we are sitting on a largely untapped potential in the form of renewable energy. From November 2013 to 31 December 2022, more than 6 gigawatts of wind, solar PV and concentrated solar power came online in South Africa, according to the CSIR.
Wind and solar power already generate twice as much power for the nation’s grid than nuclear power, without the downside of radioactive waste that requires safe disposal for a million years.
Eskom’s most recent Generation Connection Capacity Assessment shows that the Northern Cape’s grid is at full capacity, while the Western and Eastern Cape each have just 5GW available. These provinces have some of the world's best, and cheapest, solar and wind resources – which we must capitalise on.
Consider that the average prices in bid window 5 had a weighted average price of 42.9c/kWh, while the wind came in at a weighted average price of 49.5c/kWh. There’s still 23GW of grid capacity available elsewhere, and renewables are well placed to address this. Mpumalanga – where Eskom has the bulk of its increasingly shaky coal-fired fleet – has 6.5GW available.
Right now, these measures may all seem like Band-Aids. And while South Africa’s energy-crisis has never been more serious, so the solutions at hand have perhaps never been more promising: the nexus of cheaper-than-ever renewable energy and the massive advances in battery-storage are a catalyst for green power to help drive us beyond energy-insecurity.
And beyond that, 600m Africans still live without electricity, needlessly so considering the continent’s access to talent and vast resources: mineral, solar and wind. Could South Africa’s energy travails hold lessons for energy transition on the continent? I believe so, but we need those in charge to maintain momentum and make the right decisions to help unleash change, and help achieve a just energy transition – for South Africa and beyond.
https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/cheap-renewables-and-battery-storage-a-light-in-dark-times-2023-03-14
As myths about renewables are gradually busted, their potential to drive Africa-wide growth becomes apparent, writes Chris Antonopoulos
Recent events in South Africa’s energy sector have highlighted – as if there were any doubt – the need to make up for lost time on the country's energy security.
As Africa’s largest pure-play renewable energy Independent Power Producer (IPP) , with over 1GW of wind power in operation across Egypt, Senegal and South Africa, and a pipeline of additional projects in development across the continent – we share the urgency that South Africans feel in making loadshedding a thing of the past.
The outlook is still difficult, with the prospect of Eskom increasing its loadshedding up to 16 stages in an effort to avert a complete collapse of the grid. While this seems a crushing prospect for businesses and householders, the consequences of a grid collapse would be dire and full restoration of power could take many weeks.
There are also some points of light in what can seem like unending darkness: the City of Cape Town has for example rolled out facilities for businesses and homes to sell power back to the grid. Compared to the scale of South Africa’s energy-crisis, this might seem like a drop in the ocean, but there are a number of examples of robust efforts to get beyond it.
First, the advances in battery storage: last year Eskom awarded contracts to two service providers for the rollout of its Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project. The World Bank-funded project is designed to manage demand during peak periods and support grid stability. Its first phase comes onstream five months from now and the second by December 2024.
The project will use large-scale utility batteries with a daily capacity of 1440MWh, and 60MW of solar PV at Eskom sites in the Western, Northern and Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. The KwaZulu-Natal project alone will store and distribute enough electricity to power a small town for four hours. More recently, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy issued a request for proposals (RFP) for 513MW of battery storage at five substations in the Northern Cape.
The second factor, linked directly to the first, is South Africa’s famed mineral wealth: Bushveld Energy is commissioning SA’s first vanadium electrolyte factory and aims to produce about a million litres of vanadium electrolyte this year. It will reach full capacity of 8m litres over the next four years, making it the biggest such facility outside of China.
This is timely considering the economies of scale in the battery market as South Africa is already the sixth largest residential storage market with an additional 1.3GW of utility-scale storage set to be contracted this year. These advances for battery-storage technology lay to rest the myth that renewables can’t provide baseload power.
Hopefully the link will work for you beginerman. The link shows the project plan schedule and the commissioning part of it which should have begun 3/3/22 (coincidently).
https://www.elidz.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ELIDZ-Bushveld-Tender-Drawings-Final-Rev-0.pdf
425 Pre-Commissioning 2 wks Thu 030322 Wed 160322 0%
426 Cold Commissioning 2 wks Thu 170322 Thu 310322 0%
427 Cold Commissioning Test Complete (Clause 8.2.1) 0 days Thu 310322 Thu 310322 0%
428 Hot Commissioning 2 wks Fri 010422 Thu 140422 0%
429 Functional Test 2 wks Tue 190422 Wed 040522 0%
430 Reliability Tests 4 wks Thu 050522 Wed 010622 0%
431 Continuos Performance Test 6 wks Mon 060622 Mon 180722 0%
432 Hand Over to Client 1 day Tue 190722 Tue 190722 0
Not sure anyone here would know the contents of a contract between BMN and the contractor.
I would have to assume if it's at the cold commissioning stage that there shouldn't be any additional costs to build or design the plant. I though they had said there is no more capital expenditure required over the next year which I would hope would mean that the costs of the electrolyte plant are covered by all monies already/spent or set aside.
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/bushveld_minerals/news/rns/story/r77381r
There was this paragraph in the Mustang Energy RNS from 28/11/22 They currently have until 31st March but that could presumably extended again.
http://www.mustangplc.com/announcements/28112022%20Acquisition%20of%20additional%20interest%20in%20VRFB%20Holdings%20Limited.pdf
"The 2021 Noteholders and BMN (as the holders of the 2021 CLNs and the 2022 CLNs respectively) and the parties to the Investment Agreement have agreed to extend the Maturity Date until 31 March 2023 (the "Extended Maturity Date") to allow for the finalisation of a prospectus and review process of that prospectus by the Financial Conduct Authority in connection with Readmission, a process that is well underway."
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/bushveld_minerals/news/rns/story/x5zlolx
Bushveld Minerals Limited (AIM: BMN), the integrated primary vanadium producer and energy storage solutions provider, notes the recent media report, published in South Africa on 19 February, which referred to the commissioning of the Bushveld Electrolyte Company ('BELCO'), South Africa's first vanadium electrolyte factory, having started and the hope to produce 1 million litres of vanadium electrolyte this year.
The Company would like to clarify that whilst cold commissioning of the electrolyte manufacturing facility has commenced, hot commissioning and production is, as previously advised, due to be completed in H1 2023. Further, whilst progress is being made in the qualification process with manufacturers to use its electrolyte, the Company is not providing any production guidance, at the current time, as production will be informed by sales and off-take contracts with Original Equipment Manufacturers, discussions of which are ongoing.
Not sure how many containers we send out over a year but a saving is a saving.
https://www.ft.com/content/d739cd47-e434-43c3-9b4e-472bcef4abaf
This month it cost $1,444 to ship a standard 40ft steel container from eastern China to the US west coast at short notice, according to shipping data specialist Xeneta, down from a peak of $9,682 in March last year.
Found this in the following;
https://www.australianvanadium.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/VSUN-Energy-Presentation-November-2019.pdf
Vanadium electrolyte contains 145g of high-purity V2O5 per litre.
and
1GWh of new vanadium energy storage technologies needing around 10,000 tonnes of high-purity V2O5