The Eskom Duvha Power Station, in the coal rich Witbank region of South Africa, 2/5/15. MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images
On Monday, U.S. solar firm SunPower Corp began construction work on the 86MW Prieska solar farm in South Africa. Expected to be fully operational in 2016, the project is the third solar power plant constructed by SunPower under South Africa’s initiative to promote renewable energy. In 2014, SunPower completed two projects totaling 33MW, also located in the Northern Cape province. Furthermore, SunPower expects to manufacture up to 160MW of solar panels annually at its new manufacturing plant in Cape Town, which will be opened later this year. “With an abundance of reliable, cost-effective solar resources, South Africa is one of the fastest growing solar markets in the world today,” said Tom Werner, president and CEO of SunPower.
The Prieska plant will sell its output to regional public utility Eskom, and the need has never been more pressing. Lacking supply to meet demand, Eskom has been massively “loadshedding,” causing frequent disruptive blackouts and causing public outcry. It cut power for many hours at a time during eight consecutive days in April, bringing the total number of days with blackouts since the start of the year above 30. And the grid remains vulnerable - there is a dire shortage of generation capacity as several units are currently out of service due to planned and unplanned outages.
The mismanagement at Eskom has become a scandal in South Africa. The CEO and three other directors were suspended on March 11, and it was only this past Friday that an acting CEO was appointed. In the immediate future, more loadshedding is likely, although hopefully less frequently. But will renewable energy be key in fixing the energy crisis over the medium- and long-term?
It certainly seems so. South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement (REIPPP) has been so promising that the government is accelerating and significantly expanding it. On Thursday, the government announced the REIPPP’s “extremely successful” fourth bid window results of 1,121MW in awards for power purchase agreements. The 13 contracted projects include 676MW of wind, 415MW of solar, 25MW of biomass and 5MW of hydro, according to SeeNews Renewables. These projects need to finalize their financing in the final quarter of the year, and commissioning is expected to start in November 2016.
South Africa has approved renewable energy projects totaling 5,243MW under all bid windows so far. The country now plans to allocate additional capacity to the fourth round. By early June at the latest it aims to issue a request for proposals for an expedited procurement process of 1,800MW from all renewable energy technologies, which will be open to all unsuccessful bidders from prior rounds. But the biggest news of all is that the Department of Energy is planning a further 6,300MW of projects under the REIPPP program.
South Africa’s nominal installed electricity capacity is currently about 45,700MW (although the operational capacity is lower), and peak demand is expected to rise to 53,900MW by 2025. Renewables won’t entirely solve South Africa’s energy crisis, but the country is making commendable progress on its goal to expand its renewable electricity capacity to 18,200MW by 2030. Expect more headline-grabbing renewable energy projects to be green-lighted in South Africa.
