South Africa has recorded a landmark 160 days with no load-shedding, the longest period in over four years, and is on track for a load-shedding free winter. However, maintaining future grid stability will require a doubling down on wind investment as well as higher spending on transmission infrastructure, says local renewable energy developer Red Cap.
Prior to this, there were many instances where load shedding would have been necessary were it not for 3 400MW of wind energy, which remained available to the grid even when baseload power was insufficient. South Africa has the largest wind power installation in Africa, but notably lags behind other regions. In Europe, wind provides 20% of the overall energy mix, with plans to increase wind’s contribution to over 50% by 2050. Already, 58% of Denmark’s power supply comes from wind.
A diversified energy mix relies on sufficient infrastructure. Eskom’s transmission lines are near or at capacity in many regions, which constrains the amount of renewable energy available to the grid. In practical terms, this means that renewable energy projects have uncertain access to the electricity grid.
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Source: ITOnlineSA - 🏆 16. / 63 Read more »
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