Pretoria - South Africa’s electricity crisis has had a positive outcome: it led to great strides in the generation of renewable energy, including wind and solar energy.

The renewable energy programmes aim to deliver 17.8 gigawatts (GW) of green power by 2030 with 1 827 megawatts (MW) renew-able energy now contributing to an installed capacity of 45 000 MW.

“Five years ago we had a vision that our generation capacity would include a large portion of renewable energy,” said Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson opening the SA International Renewable Energy Conference (SAIREC) in Cape Town on Sunday.

“We had to advance our generation capacity but also had to reduce the country’s primary reliance on fossil fuels.

“We had to diversify the national network and stimulate an indigenous energy industry with the assistance of the private sector,” the minister said.

About 3 000 delegates from the private, public and academic sectors will discuss strategies to accelerate the use of renewable energy during the conference, which ends on Wednesday.

In a period of national gloom over the electricity crisis and load shedding, renewable energy has quietly added 6 327MW of capacity to the national grid and landed R193 billion in private investments.

A recent study by the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) showed a net benefit to the economy - subtracting the tariffs paid to independent power producers from the savings to Eskom in coal and diesel consumption made possible by renewables – of R800m last year.

Joemat-Pettersson said the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer was part of the government’s Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (IPPPP) designed to contribute towards socio-economic and environmentally sustainable growth, and to start and stimulate the renewable industry in South Africa.

Since 2010, more than 90 projects have been awarded to Independent Power Producers and almost 40 have already connected to the electricity grid, she said.

The programme was “world class”, she added. “We are spear-heading a programme which is a benchmark in what South Africa wants to do with renewable energy. It is a flagship programme of this government,” she said.

Department of Energy IPP department head Karen Breytenbach said nearly half of the awarded projects are owned by South Africans.

“When we started the programme this was new to us so we had to import almost everything. However, our South African IPPs have become more innovative and we can see how this initiative is growing from programme to programme,” she said.

South Africa’s ageing electricity transmission grid needs investment of $15bn by 2022 to help cope with increased new energy production, an executive at German state development bank KfW said.

Ihno Baumfalk, KfW’s senior energy and climate project manager, said Eskom’s ageing grid made it difficult to feed more electricity into the system.

“At present you need to do grid strengthening to accommodate the additional energy generation which is being put into the grid,” he said on the sidelines of SAIREC.

KfW has given Eskom a R4bn loan to help modernise its power grid to enable it to connect solar and wind power plants to the system.

Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said the utility would announce its plans to strengthen the grid over the next decade on October 16.

Earlier, Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies said the Solar Energy Programme (SEP) would deliver a quarter of the country’s renewable energy by 2030.

PRETORIA NEWS

Lisa Isaacs And Reuters

SA’s power crisis to ease