Renewable energy, particularly solar PV, is taking a leading role in South Africa.
“This growth is driven by the residential and C&I market, but also the regulatory reforms… where there’s no longer a licence requirement for embedded-generation projects of any size.”Not-for-profit renewable PV industry body SAPVIA counts organisations such as Huawei, Eskom, the big-four banks, as well as independent power producers as its members.
Melamu commented that SA has an estimated generation capacity gap of about 5 000MW to 6 000MW. However, she noted this was when the country has stage two load-shedding. However, she believes the development and funding of the Just Energy Transition framework will be one of the drivers that will propel the industry to the next stage.
“In just two more months of this year, we have seen that number double. There are about 4.6GW of projects...some are online already. If you consider that in the first three months of 2023, there are 2GW of projects that have already been registered with the regulator. This signals how the rest of the year is likely to look like.