Construction World February 2015

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD FEBRUARY 2015
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COMMENT
EDITOR
Wilhelm du Plessis
ADVERTISING MANAGER
Erna Oosthuisen
LAYOUT & DESIGN
Lesley Testa
CIRCULATION
Karen Smith TOTAL CIRCULATION:
(Third Quarter ’14)
4 712
PUBLISHER
Karen Grant
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Tandym Cape
According the CSIR (Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research) this cost is 81 cents per
kilowatt hour while the costs of generating
a similar kilowatt hour by Medupi and Kusile
will be 80 cents. This has led to an increase of
photovoltaic installations – the National Energy
Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) maintains that
the combined capacity of these installations is
10 megawatts at present.
If one considers that Germany – that
has only half the amount of sunshine South
Africa has annually – is aiming to generate 52
gigawatts of solar power by 2017, one realises
the significance of such power generation.
Germany has already achieved significant solar
energy generation: on a specific day in June
2014 solar energy was responsible for half of
the country’s power needs.
In South Africa, Cape Town is one city that
allows customers to produce solar energy
while excess power that may be produced
is sold back into the national energy grid.
Eskom, however, has restrictions as to the size
of photovoltaic installations and the amount
South Africa is currently in the grip
of an energy crisis. Households
and businesses are increasingly
generating power on their rooftops
with solar photovoltaic systems at
a cost per kilowatt that now rivals
the power that will eventually be
generated by Kusile and Medupi
power stations.
of energy that is sold back to the grid. This is
because the selling of excess power back to
the grid has implications for municipalities:
these derive a part of their revenue from elec-
tricity sales.
Nersa believes that those who generate
electricity with photovoltaic panels should pay
more for electricity as they will boost demand
from the grid when the sun goes down. Those
that are for photovoltaic power maintain that
it can alleviate strain and should not be a
disincentive. It will, according to the Southern
African Photovoltaic Industry Association, also
create a new industry.
From an outsider’s point of view it seems
to be a case of Eskom asking clients to reduce
consumption, but then penalising those that
find alternative ways to reduce consumption.
Nersa does justify its stance: it says that
rooftop installations without storage make no
contribution to reducing peak demand because
of load shifting: the demand for electricity will
pick up at a steeper rate than before as solar
users switch back to the grid.
A second reason, they maintain, is that lower
consumption during the day means munici-
palities will lose revenue and will be unable to
cover fixed costs. For this reason a time-of-use
tariff is suggested as this will encourage users
to include storage in their installation rather
than export power back to the grid.
The mass adoption of photovoltaic panels
will lead to a drop in revenue for municipalities.
However, the CSIR does suggest a way to stop
this loss in revenue.
Whatever the case: there does seem to be
a lot of red-tape and contextual issues that
stand in the way of improved energy use. One
can only hope that such issues will be sorted
out soon and that South Africans can harvest
alternative energies without being penalised ...
or negatively affecting other bodies.
Wilhelm du Plessis
Twitter: @ConstWorldSA
The 1.2 MW Black River Park Solar Project has broken new ground in becom-
ing the largest integrated PV plant in Africa and the first to legally transmit
electricity back into the City of Cape Town’s electrical distribution network.