One of the reasons behind a recent scramble to harness wind energy in South Africa is the realisation that electricity from wind turbines will soon be cheaper than power from the Eskom grid.
According to the president of the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce, Michael Bagraim, wind-powered electricity will cost 95 cents a unit against the more than R1 a unit that will be charged by Eskom in four years’ time.
“This raises questions about government policy and why Eskom plans to spend so much money on new coal and nuclear power stations when wind energy will be cheaper at the point of generation,” Bagraim was quoted in the online power journal Esi-Africa.com.
Bagraim said the price of Eskom power would continue to rise, along with the cost of labour, coal and transport, while the cost of wind power would change very little. Government policy, encapsulated in the Integrated Resource Plan 2010 published last month, envisages that renewable energy will account for 42% of new power generation over the next 20 years, and wind power will make up 6% of that.
Atmospheric scientist Dr Kilian Hagemann predicts the figures will be much higher and that by 2050 the bulk of the country’s electricity could come from wind turbines, solar panels and other forms of renewable energy. In 2007 Hagemann drew up the first mesoscale wind atlas of South Africa. “During my research, I used state-of-the-art wind energy modelling to calculate optimum sites for wind farms,” he says.
“I realised that South Africa boasts plenty of possibilities and good sites for wind power. “One of my conclusions was that, technically, 35% of our electricity could come from wind turbines alone. Today, that percentage is much higher because the technologies have advanced and become more sophisticated,” Hagemann says.
Wind generation programmes are due to come on stream between 2014 and 2015, but were dealt a blow in mid-March when the National Energy Regulator of South Africa proposed a significant drop in the price that would be paid for renewable energy feed-ins to the national electricity grid.
Hagemann described the proposed 25% cut in feed-in tariffs for wind projects as “very concerning”, adding that it could lower investor appetite for South Africa. The South African Wind Energy Association and other renewable energy groups said it could cause a “severe blow to market confidence in the government’s commitment to a fixed feed-in tariff” and delays in procurement processes.
Shawn Johnson, an environmental consultant for commercial wind farms, countered that the proposed feed-in reduction could have a positive spin-off: “The cowboys who were setting up wind projects just to sell them on may fall by the wayside.”
Local businesses, often in partnership with foreign companies, have an eye on capitalising not just from national grid feed-in reimbursements but also internationally- funded carbon offset programmes. They are buying up large tracts of land, mostly along the coastline in the Western and Eastern Cape, to install wind turbines.
Hagemann says his research showed South Africa has much potential when it comes to wind energy. “Because the country has five different climate regions, you pretty much have wind, somewhere, all the time,” he says.
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