People who own the sun

Patrick Bam is an executive member of a township cooperative in the Eastern Cape that is generating, managing and benefiting from its own sun-powered energy project. He says it has transformed life in his community.

“We were losing a lot as a community, especially as our food and appliances were being damaged due to load shedding,” he said. “But with this project, we’ve been able to generate our own electricity and even sell it to the municipality.”

Called the SalTuba Cooperative, the project is one of South Africa’s leading examples of socially owned renewable energy in action, and a model for energy democracy. Its cooperative model has inspired other townships to take on similar initiatives, and civil society groups and researchers use it as evidence that community-led renewable energy is possible, even in urban, low-income contexts.

Owned and managed by residents in KwaZakhele township in Gqeberha through a democratic cooperative structure, the project is built on public municipal land and governed collectively. Each household holds a stake and a vote, and members decide together how to reinvest revenue from electricity generation, whether into food gardening, maintenance, or other community priorities.

Socially owned energy

Unlike traditional energy projects, where private individuals, corporations, or government agencies own the means of production, participants in socially owned renewable energy (SORE) projects take charge of their own power supply. While there is no official registry of SORE projects in South Africa, #PowerTracker research has identified more than 20 operating initiatives across the country.

One example is the Ekhenana Solar Commune, based in the Abahlali baseMjondolo settlement, in Durban. The community-run solar project powers a library, study hall and phone-charging station.

Others are two local NGO-led projects, one based in Durban’s Austerville and the other in Emalahleni in Mpumalanga. In Austerville, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance’s office has a grid-tied solar PV system and serves as a community charging hub. In Emalahleni, Vukani Environmental Movement members have installed an off-grid rooftop PV system.

On a larger scale, the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm in the Eastern Cape is cited as one of the earliest and most prominent examples of community ownership in renewable energy, making it a landmark case for socially owned renewables in the country.

A trust representing the local AmaMfengu people owns 9% of the wind farm, which began operating in 2016 and supplies electricity to Eskom under a 20-year power purchase agreement.

Cooperative born from crisis

#PowerTracker recently visited the SalTuba project, named after two long streets in KwaZakhele — Sali and Tubali — where most of the cooperative’s members live. The names were combined to create “SalTuba”, reflecting the project’s deep community roots.

Run by a cooperative of 36 households, the project emerged in 2019 as a direct response to rising electricity tariffs, relentless load shedding, and the powerlessness township residents felt over their energy supply. It was formally registered in 2021 as a primary cooperative.

Initially focused on food gardening and local business development, it worked with the KwaZakhele Development Agency and Nelson Mandela University to explore renewable energy solutions in response to the community’s struggles with load shedding and rising electricity tariffs.

What began as a modest grassroots initiative soon evolved into a pioneering solar energy project. In 2019 it installed its first solar panels and began generating power for local benefit.

Since then SalTuba has delivered measurable benefits to its members. Over the first 20 months, the project generated approximately 8,800 kWh of electricity, equivalent to R19,300 in value, or about R966 a month based on municipal tariffs.

The solar array is strategically mounted on a carport structure and a community-built waste recycling facility, maximising the use of available space. Over the years the energy system has been upgraded from 5 kW to 25 kW of capacity.

Beyond power generation, the cooperative has expanded its food gardening initiative, supplying fresh produce to the community and even offering vegetables on credit.

Crucially, the project has empowered women and youth: women lead the soup kitchen and gardening efforts, while younger members like Lubabalo Mkhiva have acquired technical skills in solar installation and energy management.

“I joined this project because I saw the impact it brought to the community,” said Mkhiva. “It encouraged me to be part of it, seeing the unemployment rate and poverty affecting our small communities.”

Bureaucratic barriers

But while SalTuba has demonstrated the potential of community-led energy, navigating municipal systems has proven anything but straightforward. According to Khaled El-Jabi, director at Energyworx, the engineering firm that helped design the system and structure of its power purchase agreement (PPA), the project faced serious bureaucratic hurdles from the start.

“There was no mechanism within the municipality to allow this type of connection to the grid,” he explained. Because the land is municipally owned, SalTuba first had to obtain permission to receive a municipal account number. Only then could a smart meter be installed to monitor and credit the electricity they produced.

The PPA, signed with PowerX, an independent energy trader, spans 10 years and is structured to optimise returns using a time-of-use tariff model. According to El-Jabi, this tariff is “split between peak, standard and off-peak sections – peak being most expensive, then standard and off-peak being the cheapest.”

“It is also split on seasons, with summer from September to May and winter being June, July and August. The PPA will pay based on the electricity generated during those times. For example, electricity generation during summer standard time will be allocated that particular tariff amount.”

El-Jabi believes this model is scalable: “There are 120 such ‘gap taps’ in KwaZakhele alone, with potential for three to four megawatts of community-owned solar. Communities can become prosumers, not just consumers,” he said.

Still, he cautions that developers need to be “extremely patient. Changing the system requires persistence, political navigation, and detailed planning.”

Municipal constraints

Although SalTuba has made strides in generating electricity, connecting that power to the grid and earning revenue from it has proved complicated. David Breitfeld, development adviser in the Nelson Mandela Bay electricity department, said the municipality supports the project in principle but is constrained by outdated policies and procurement rules.

“We’re happy to connect community generators,” he said, “but legally we can’t just buy electricity from anyone. If we buy from SalTuba, then why not the next household? We’d need to run 10,000 tenders. That’s not practical.”

Instead, the municipality enables net billing, which allows the project to reduce its municipal electricity bill to zero but not earn cash. A smart meter currently being installed will record exactly when electricity is generated and at what tariff value (peak, standard, off-peak). These meters are crucial, Breitfeld explained, because the value of electricity varies across time and season.

“If you export power during peak winter hours, that’s worth far more than during off-peak times,” he said.

Wheeling deal

SalTuba’s turning point came in 2022 with its PPA with licensed energy trader PowerX. The municipality enabled wheeling, a system which allows SalTuba to sell electricity through the municipal grid to PowerX, who pays the cooperative while covering wheeling charges.

“This model is finally allowing us to move forward,” Brietfeld said, confirming installation of the smart meter by the municipality is imminent.

Still, he noted structural problems in the system: since SalTuba’s solar installation is not physically linked to residents’ homes, community members don’t see reduced household energy bills directly. “If they had installed the system in front of their home meters, they could have consumed the power directly before it entered the grid — that would have saved them money immediately.”

Instead, power goes straight into the broader grid, making it difficult to attribute usage to individuals without more complex metering and agreements. “You don’t want to spend R100 to earn R10 worth of power,” he added.

Transition townships

Despite the bureaucratic hurdles, SalTuba proves that communities can successfully manage renewable energy projects, said Mareka Mokwatlo, manager of Transition Township pilot projects based in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape.

Mokwatlo joined the Transition Township Project, an action research initiative focused on developing sustainable local economies, in 2016 and works with SalTuba from a research perspective. In 2024 the project was awarded a three-year research grant by the National Research Foundation to scale up the SalTuba pilot and to implement additional pilot projects.

“Communities are capable of implementing such projects, and acquiring such assets. But they do face numerous challenges, and those challenges can include the regulations that they have to work within. Having strong community support helps, and that comes with resilience,” she said.

For communities considering similar projects, Mokwatlo offers practical advice: “Start engaging the community early. Tap into your existing assets first, like skills that are already there. We don’t have to go outside to hire people in our working-class communities. We know we have artisanal skills, and we have stokvels that can be used towards funding our operations.”

Land access remains crucial in the South African context, she said. “Access to land is necessary to generate and improve our livelihoods. We need to use land strategically and understand local regulations, which can be complex.”

Mokwatlo emphasised starting small and building trust: “Partner with local businesses before you go outside. Work with what you have. Building strong partnerships requires commitment, and people need to trust you.”

“For this type of project, start small, pilot, and design to scale. We started with 15 panels on a carport, and now there’s a structure and 40 panels.”

Broader vision

Professor Janet Cherry, head of the department of development studies at Nelson Mandela University, sees SalTuba as part of a broader vision for a just energy transition. Her work focuses on how community-owned energy projects can fundamentally reshape South Africa’s economy.

“Some critics think that this model is only going to meet a small part of the country’s energy needs. Our research shows otherwise: in theory household production could meet 83% of the whole country’s planned energy needs,” she said.

Community-owned energy projects can be a game-changer for local communities, Cherry emphasised. “By producing electricity locally, communities can create new jobs and economic opportunities. It’s not just about generating electricity, but about empowering communities to take control of their energy future.”

“You don’t have to have a big solar plant in the middle of the desert, you can actually do it on every single roof or every open space. The biggest opportunity is the inclusion of community-owned energy systems that can alleviate the electricity constraints experienced in South Africa.”

But realising this vision requires fundamental policy reform, she added: “Municipalities need to be able to buy electricity from community cooperatives like SalTuba, but the current regulations and administrative capacity are not supportive. We need policy changes to make it easier for community cooperatives to participate economically in the energy transition process.”

Cherry’s concept of a just transition goes beyond simply replacing coal jobs. “Just transition is not about people being laid off from the coal mines and then unemployment goes up, it’s about completely restructuring the economy to be owned and controlled by ordinary people,” she said.

“It’s about creating a more just and equitable society, where people have control over their own lives and livelihood.”

You can watch our recent webinar titled, Whose Land, Whose Power? The Nexus of Renewable Energy, Land Rights and Social Ownership to learn more about community-owned renewables – and find details of SalTuba and similar projects on our #PowerTracker tool here.

This investigation by Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism was supported by the African Climate Foundation’s New Economy Hub.