Upington Airport (IATA: UTN, ICAO: FAUP) is an airport located in Upington, Northern Cape, South Africa. At 4,900 metres (16,100 ft), runway 17/35 is one of the longest runways in the world. The high elevation of the airport, extremely high summer temperatures and the fact that it was designed for the Boeing 747 necessitated the extreme length of the main runway.
//Khara Hais Local Municipality was a local municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It fell within the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality and governed the town of Upington and surrounding rural areas. As of 2011 the municipality had a population of approximately 93,500 people, and covered an area of 21,780 square kilometres (8,410 sq mi). The unusual spelling of the name comes from the original transcription of the Khwe language name, where the click consonant became "//".
The ZF Mgcawu District Municipality (Afrikaans: ZF Mgcawu-distriksmunisipaliteit; Tswana: Mmasepala wa Sedika wa ZF Mgcawu), known before 1 July 2013 as the Siyanda District Municipality, is one of the 5 districts of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The seat of the municipality is Upington. As of 2011, the majority (76%) of its 236,783 residents speak Afrikaans. The district code is DC8.
The Karoshoek Solar One Power Station, also Karoshoek Concentrated Solar Power Station, is a 100 megawatts concentrated solar power plant in South Africa. The solar component of this power station comprises curved mirrors that heat a fluid to a high temperature. The hot fluid is used to heat water, creating steam. The steam then "drives a steam turbine to convert the energy into electricity". That part of the power station is complemented by molten salt thermal storage technology, which "allows five hours of energy storage, enabling the plant to continue producing electricity in the absence of sunlight", supplying energy during South African peak hours. The consortium that owns the solar farm comprises foreign and domestic independent power producers (IPPs) and local and international financiers and other investors. A 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA), between the owners and Eskom, the South African electric utility company, governs the sale of the generated energy to Eskom, the off-taker. The power station achieved commercial commissioning in November 2018.
Upington (Khoekhoe: //Khara hais) is a town founded in 1873 and located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, on the banks of the Orange River. The town was originally called Olijvenhoutsdrift ('Olive wood drift'), due to the abundance of olive wood trees in the area, but later renamed after Sir Thomas Upington, Attorney-General and then Prime Minister of the Cape. It originated as a mission station established in 1871 and run by Reverend Christiaan Schröder. The mission station now houses the Kalahari Orange Museum. The museum is also the home of a donkey statue, which recognises the enormous contribution that this animal made to the development of the region during the pioneering days of the 19th century.
Louisvale is a town in ZF Mgcawu District Municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It has been described as a "small, impoverished town" by the Mail & Guardian, and it briefly became notorious for the baby Tshepang case, regarding the rape of a nine-month-old baby in 2001.
Upington railway station is a railway station serving the town of Upington in South Africa. It has been part of the TransNamib Railway that connected Windhoek with the town. The service stopped early in the 2000s.