Load connection capacity assessment of South African national ports

The study assesses the capacity of eight national ports to serve additional electrical demand for the supply of shore-power to ships. The additional demand is already assessed in this publication.

To defossilise port activities and international maritime transport, it is crucial to provide shore power from renewable electricity. Providing shore power for eight South African ports will increase the demand for electricity and its transmission considerably. Therefore, it is essential to assess the connection capacity at each point to serve this additional demand, which this study aims to do. 

The result is ranking list of the ports in terms of maximum spare capacity and lowest connection risk. This serves as a basis to prioritise technical studies of the grid connection and to evaluate whether the municipality or the electricity public utility (Eskom) must be consulted to unlock additional load capacity.