Jenbacher microgrid to boost plant uptime at South Africa’s Danone

INNIO has announced that food and beverage company Danone will install a Jenbacher microgrid at its existing power plant in Anderbolt, Boksburg, South Africa.

The installation will allow Danone to integrate a variety of distributed energy resources and storage devices to ensure plant uptime in the face of blackouts, which have increasingly plagued South Africa for many years.

In order to mitigate the grid instability caused by so-called loadshedding, as well as drive energy efficiency and reduce emissions, Danone has opted for a combined heat and power system, allowing for the production of distributed power and heat for their industrial process.

Jenbacher distributor Clarke Energy will deliver the new microgrid facility, which will utilise two Jenbacher J616 containerised engines and the Jenbacher microgrid controller, providing a total capacity of 5MWe.

The Jenbacher engines will operate on natural gas as a transitional energy source and can be converted to hydrogen as soon as sufficient hydrogen is available.

Kid Nkantsu, senior director for operations and design at Danone Sub-Saharan Africa, commented: With our frequent power supply outages, this microgrid solution will allow us to become independent from the grid, increase production uptime and integrate various distributed energy resources including hydrogen all while reducing our carbon footprint.

South Africas utility Eskom uses a system of loadshedding (scheduled blackouts) to manage the lack of generation capacity to meet demand.

The situation has resulted in greater interest in decentralised combined heat and power (CHP) engine plants, according to INNIO.

Danone recently announced a programme called Renew Danone, aimed at expanding partnerships and driving sustainability across the organisation. A key focus of the programme is to decarbonise operations, a goal which will be supported by this project.