Public and private sector involvement in the provision of electricity in urban areas of South Africa

Bibliography: pages 163-172.This study examines the involvement of public and private sector institutions in the provision of electricity in urban areas of South Africa. Access to electricity in South Africa is highly unequal and little progress is currently being made to bring electricity to all, mainly due to institutional and financial problems. The focus on public and private sector roles is adopted because of the social importance and economic nature of electricity provision, the global and national significance of privatisation policies, and the current importance of allocating appropriate roles to the public and private sectors in widening access to services, including electricity, in South Africa. The distribution sector of the South African electricity supply industry (ESI) is highly fragmented. Municipal electricity departments, which mostly serve white residential, commercial and industrial areas, are generally highly profitable and provide an effective service, but are not highly efficient by international standards. These departments are self-sufficient in the implementation of electrification projects, and have access to adequate capital to finance such projects. Electricity distribution authorities set up to serve black areas, especially electricity departments of black local authorities, are ineffective, and often financially unsound. Due to the weakness of public authorities charged with the task of undertaking electrification projects in black areas, the implementation of these projects is dependent on the involvement of private electrical consultants and contractors. However, few such projects are currently being undertaken due to inappropriate planning and shortages of concessionary finance. After close consideration of the benefits and drawbacks of public and private involvement in range of activities that arise from electricity provision, it is concluded that the key challenges facing the ESI in South Africa will best be met if the distribution sector is restructured on a regional basis in order to utilise existing expertise, and retained within the public sector. Accelerated electrification initiatives, planned and co-ordinated by these distribution authorities, would draw upon the experience and capabilities of private electrical consultants and contractors. Public sector leadership in mobilising both public and private investment would also be necessary. Thus, whilst public institutions would be dominant, important roles would remain for the private sector in the provision of electricity in urban areas. The results of this study suggest that far from privatising service provision in South Africa, it will be essential to allocate a dominant role to the public sector in widening access to services to all

The IACS Cybersecurity Certification Framework (ICCF). Lessons from the 2017 study of the state of the art.

The principal goal of this report is to present the experiments of the IACS component Cybersecurity Certification Framework (ICCF) performed in 2017 by the NETs (National Exercise Teams) of several Member States, namely France, Poland and Spain. Based on real life use cases and simulations of ICCF activities, this report documents the current practices of these countries and NET members’ views in relation to IACS products cybersecurity certification. These studies have led to a series of findings that will be useful for the future of the ICCF in the context of the European Cybersecurity Certification Framework. In conclusion, a plan of action is proposed for the 2018-2019 period.JRC.E.2-Technology Innovation in Securit

Costing, Comparing and Competing: Developing an Approach to the Benchmarking of Labour Market Regulation

The World Bank's Doing Business survey seeks to measure and compare the costs to business of various types of regulation, including labour regulation. As such it is an important driver of labour market "reform" globally and in South Africa. It may also be encouraging a tendency of different systems of regulation to converge

Lieutenant A and the rottweilers: a pheno-cognitive analysis of a fire-fighter's experience of a critical incident and peritraumatic resilience

Fire-fighters are subject to attacks in the field. This idiographic Pheno-Cognitive Analysis (PCA) studies a fireman’s cognitive experience of a Critical Incident (CI) when he is attacked by dangerous dogs during an intervention. The PCA method, created for this research, extends the Elicitation Interview (EI), yields a first-person narrative of the subject’s experience out of his episodic memory, and semantically elicits 460 Cognitive Operations and four patterns of Cognitive Trajectories. Their variations in shape (Intra-Variability) and occurrence (Inter-Variability) are analysed. A model of Decision-Making-in-Action (DMA), and five Metacognitive Skills providing Peritraumatic Resilience (PTR) are revealed. Epistemological limits are discussed

The Reactivity of Zirconium Hydrides with Transition Metal Carbonyls

The reactivity of bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl) zirconium hydride complexes with a variety of Group VIII transition metal carbonyls has been investigated. These reactions are observed to follow two distinct pathways; one involving reductive loss of the zirconium hydrides as H2, the other proceeding by. hydride transfer to the carbon atom of a carbonyl to afford CO reduction. Treatment of CpM(CO)2 (M=Co, Rh, RuH) with Cp2*ZrH2 or [Cp2*ZrN2]2N2(Cp=C5H5, Cp*=C5Me5) give the "early" and "late" metal dimers, CpM(CO)2ZrCp2*: with elimination of H2 or N2. The X-ray crystal structure of CpCo(CO)2ZrCp2*; is reported and shows that this molecule contains a Co-Zr single bond bridged by a conventionally bound μ-CO and a four-electron donating μ-η1, η1 CO. The reactions of Cp2*ZrHX (X=F, Cl) with these carbonyls proceed by the second pathway to give oxycarbene complexes, Cp(CO)M=CHO-Zr(X)Cp2* (M=Co, Rh). These compounds demonstrate that the zirconium hydride reduction of a Group VIII metal carbonyl is reversible; an equilibrium is observed between the carbene complexes and the starting metal dicarbonyl and ziconium hydride. Treatment of CpM(CO)(PMe3)H or CpM(CO)2CH3 (M=Fe, Ru) with Cp2*ZrH2, in the presence of PMe3, affords Cp(PMe3)2M-CH2O-Zr(H)Cp2* or Cp2*Zr(OCH=CH2)H. The mechanisms of the transformation are proposed to involve initial formation of an iron or ruthenium oxycarbene intermediate which undergoes migratory insertion into the metal hydride or alkyl bond followed by phosphine trapping or β-elimination to give the observed products. Several zirconium oxycarbene complexes have been prepared by the reduction of the corresponding zirconium carbonyl by Cp2*ZrH2. These molecules represent some of the first isolable examples of Group IV metal to carbon multiple bonding. The X-ray crystal structure of Cp2(PMe3)Zr=CHO-Zr(I)Cp2* • C6H6 is reported. Treatment of Cp2(CO)Zr=CHO-Zr(H)Cp2* with MeI or Cp2(PMe3)Zr=CHO-Zr(I)Cp2* with CO gives a new product, the structure of which has been shown by X-ray diffraction to be Cp2*ZrOCH=C(Zr(I)Cp2*)O. The mechanism for this transformation has been shown to involve an intramolecular coupling of carbene and carbonyl ligands on a zirconium center to give a zirconium ketene intermediate, which rearranges to the observed product. In the presence of pyridine the ketene intermediate can be trapped to give the isolable Cp2(pyr)Zr(O=C=CHO-Zr(H)Cp2*).</p

Analysis of new electrification schemes in the Western Cape (Phase 2)

The objective of this project is to examine electricity use in newly-electrified, poor urban settlements in the Western Cape, by monitoring and analysing household energy-consumption data and relevant socio-economic information. An important aim is to understand factors which affect the movement from multiple fuel use to greater electricity consumption. The intention is also to provide useful information for electrification planners

The 'classic faith' roots of the modern 'word of faith' movement

Peer reviewedSome proponents of the ‘modern faith movement’ claim that their faith teachings are fresh revelation or newlyrevealed truths from God; others believe they are heretical or cultic because of apparent similarities of teaching to New Thought metaphysics. In this article: the evangelical roots of some of the faith teachings will be identified. Some criticisms of their opponents will be evaluated and the possibility of bringing the opposing viewpoints nearer to each other will be investigated. Not all principles taught by the faith teachers are found to be suspect. However, many of the controversies could have been prevented if the principles at stake had been communicated in a better way. A more discerning understanding of the evangelical faith heritage common to both polarities should be accentuated.Research Institute for Theology and Religio

Unleash narrowband technologies for industrial Internet of Things services

As the industrial market grows, it is becoming noticeable that there are many industrial Internet of things (IIoT) use cases for which existing technology cannot meet the huge demand of machine connectivity. For example, in the utility market, there is a strong trend to adopt new technology that can support positive business use case scenarios for efficient system operation and elaborate the dramatic increase of the services demands. Apart from this, most utility grid applications required long-range, low-power, secure, and reliable communications, which means narrowband (NB) technology can be the dominant choice. To address these challenges, this article provides a new framework architecture to enable technical decision makers to plan for NB-IIoT. Moreover, we highlight the key aspects of NB technology by focusing on the challenges, standardization, and requirements to facilitate the IIoT connectivity for industry revolutions. The motivation behind employing NB is to provide a high level of reliability, and better quality of service, and coverage. In particular, the article addresses the main applications of utility use cases under the NB umbrella, which can perform as a good bridge between utility services and the fundamental communication infrastructure. The utility use cases based on emerging technology can support the full array of smart grid services that are required for both central and distributed operation systems. Finally, the article provides connectivity solutions for potential IIoT deployment aiming to define a new roadmap for NB technology on specific industrial use cases