/ 21 October 2010

Renewable energy given walk-on role

Renewable Energy Given Walk On Role

Three announcements in the past few weeks have created new hope that the long-awaited renewable energy (RE) programme will get under way, namely: the request for information on renewable energy projects by the ­department of energy, the announcement by the minister of energy of the establishment of a solar park in the Upington area and the release of the draft integrated resource plan for electricity (IRP20 10) for public comment.

The RE programme started more than a year ago with the release of phase one of the renewable energy feed-in tariffs (Refit) by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), followed several months later by the phase two tariffs. The stated purpose of the Refit programme was to kick-start the RE industry and to enable the government to achieve its target of 100 00GWh of renewable energy generation a year by 20 14.

The feed-in tariffs that were announced covered wind, small hydro, biomass, biogas, ground-based solar photovoltaic (PV) greater than 1MW, and concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies.

Small roof-mounted grid-connected solar PV systems were not included, to the dismay of many. In spite of promises that this would be handled in phase three, this has not yet materialised.

In the ensuing period, other than an announcement that Eskom would be the sole purchaser of RE (at least in the initial stages), nothing has happened. No power purchase agreements (PPAs) have been signed, no tenders have been issued and the RE programme has ground to a halt.

This period of waiting has been marked by claims (many of which bordered on pure fantasy) of the huge viable potential for RE in this country and demands (mainly by parties with vested commercial interests) that the government revise its targets upwards, in line with these claims.

The big question that followed the Refit process is: Which of the several RE technologies that were included in the Refit would be chosen for implementation, and what would their mix be? The draft IRP20 10 has answered these and the two RE frontrunners are wind and solar.

However, to the dismay of RE activists, nuclear power generation is the big winner, whereas the RE technologies other than wind and solar are relegated to minor roles, at least for the first 10 years.

From the draft IRP20 10, it would appear that RE systems will serve one function only in the Refit programme and that is the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In spite of the apparent large slice of RE capacity allocated in IRP20 10, the contribution of RE to improving the reserve margin is very limited.

This is acknowledged in the IRP20 10 by the statement that the capacity allocated to wind and solar (which are intermittent energy sources) would not affect security of supply — additional conventional generation capacity would be provided to increase the reserve margin.

What this means is that when the wind doesn’t blow significantly anywhere, as will happen in spite of the bland denials by the proponents of wind power (this even happens in Denmark, when on October 7 the output of their 5 000 wind turbines was less than 100MW), or when the sun doesn’t shine over Upington, there must still be sufficient reserve generating capacity at conventional power stations to make up for this.

And when the wind blows and the sun shines, the conventional power stations can be given a break, thus reducing fossil-fuel usage and GHG emissions.

So RE has apparently been relegated to the role of GHG emission reduction rather than the provision of additional generation capacity, which is a worrying development as this is aimed at achieving political and environmental goals and not at securing our energy future.

All the grand visions and dreams that have been nurtured and fostered by activists that RE can and must provide a significant portion of our electrical energy needs now lie in the dust.

A puzzling feature of the draft IRP20 10 is the huge chunk of RE capacity allocated to wind, with a relatively small portion allocated to solar. Why this, when the solar resource in this country outstrips wind by a huge margin? Besides, this country has years of experience of working with solar power in off-grid systems and we have almost none in working with wind.

There are claims that our wind resource is better than suggested by wind data collected over many years. But these claims are all based on short-term studies and projections, which can be dangerous.

Equally puzzling is the announcement by the department of energy of plans to establish a solar park in the Upington area, with the potential to provide 5 000MW of solar electricity, when the draft IRP20 10 proposes only 600MW.

Is the intention to confine solar power generation to one area only? Surely it is risky to place all one’s eggs in a single basket?

Besides which, one of the great advantages of RE is distributed generation, and establishing a huge centralised facility flies in the face of what is considered to be established best practice.

For solar energy, it would appear that government is following the blueprint of a grandiose scheme that had been bandied about for many years — namely to establish a huge facility in the Upington area, which is claimed to have the potential to supply the whole country with electricity. In so doing, the simple fact that the sun does not only shine on Upington has been ignored.

Bloemfontein receives only 4% less annual solar radiation than Upington and Gauteng and the Western Cape receive only 14% less. If one takes transmission losses into account, the amount of energy that could be delivered to consumers by a solar facility in these areas would be very close to that delivered by a solar park in Upington.

One does not have to drive far outside the major cities to find huge tracts of uncultivated land, not to mention the hundreds of hectares of rooftops within the cities themselves that could be used.

A fact that also appears to have been overlooked is that the solar PV industry is well established, whereas the wind industry is not. Two factories in the Western Cape are currently producing more than enough solar panels to handle any reasonably sized PV project that may arise.

The irony is that the bulk of their output is exported for projects elsewhere.

Although government seems to have overlooked the advantage of distributed solar PV, private industry has not. It is taking the initiative in installing rooftop solar PV systems on premises for own use.

Generation of electricity for own use does not require licences and consumers may have started to realise that it is cheaper and more secure to install PV than to pay high tariffs for peak-period consumption when time-of-use metering is fully operational.

Solar PV has the advantage that peak generation is closely matched to the daytime peak demand period. There are several large systems in operation already and not a month goes by without more being announced — all this without the benefit of the subsidised Refit.

Private industry has shown that it does not need subsidies, tax breaks or carbon credits to get going on RE and major players in the industry believe that the real sustainable growth in RE will come from private customers rather than utilities.

Will the Refit programme achieve its goals? The industry has already self-started without any benefit from Refit.
And what of the government’s goal of 10 000GWh of RE a year by 20 14?

A quick calculation reveals that this would require an average continuous power output of just over 1 100MW, the equivalent of about 4 400MW of installed wind capacity.

Depending on several factors and allowing for outages, this would require about 5 000 wind turbines to be installed and operational by 20 14, roughly the same number as are currently installed in Denmark after many years. And we haven’t even started. You can draw your own conclusions.

Mike Rycroft is editor of Energize magazine, EE Publishers, www.eepublishers.co.za