Redefining South Africa's Economy with Energy Independence and Renewable Energy

South African has been living with a shortage of power supply and rolling black outs, loadshedding for over 12 years now. The warning was there that if South Africa didn’t add power capacity to the grid rolling black out will be here to stay. The Government is well aware of what needs to be done to correct the issues faced by the country in order to fix the power capacity shortage. They have the knowledge, the technology and the money to correct it but for reason unknown they haven’t acted in any serious manner to add serious capacity to the grid. So what is the way out and that is through! Step in the private sector.

Private sector

The private sector is anyone other than government that can step in to add any form of power generation to the grid, their home or business. The private sector has been waiting over a decade for the government to step in and fix loadshedding with nothing happening, even though they have promised that they will fix it. So the strategy of wishful thinking that something will happen isn’t working and something has to change. Companies and business lose money every time the power goes out, hitting their bottom line and production. The private sector has taken power supply into their own hands and decided to become energy independent.

The private sector is filling in the institutional void that government has created. So what does this look like. The affordability of solar and batteries has made this possible and these pricing continue to come down. Businesses and factories are very well suited to add solar to their roof tops to power their whole operation and with a battery backup. What is common now is that some companies operate only during the day so only having solar is perfect to take them off grid and become independent from relying on the government to supply them with power.

Some companies see this as an opportunities to create a cost saving from their own power bill and not being subjected to the cost effect of black outs. In some parts of South Africa they will pay you for any additional power you feed back into the grid. So the cost to set up a large solar and battery system pays itself off as well and getting paid to feed back into the grind, reducing the demand for electric since you generate your own power.

But the economics go further then that, So lets play this out. Banks now offer financial support to install large solar and battery systems into your business because it can be a large capital outlay in the beginning. You go ahead and install the system, your business can run off the solar alone and you have a large battery to support your operation, which actually only takes acouple of hours to charge but this isn’t really a worry anyway because you are producing excess amounts of power form the solar to charge the batteries. Now that you are getting paid to sell power back and it’s all smooth sailing, where else can we save money from our solar system? Enter electric vehicles!

I have yet to meet anyone who likes to spend money on filling of any type of fuel tank, and this is just a cost there is no two ways about it. Now most companies have company cars, delivery vehicles and trucks. So why would you waste money on fuel when you are already producing your own power! And further money you can cover your car park with solar to help charge your EV fleet.

But Range you say! Let me just kill this argument most new EV’s are coming out with an average range of 600km which is more then enough for 1 tank range and charging times are quick. The new Tesla’s can add 400km of range in 40min, that is a lot of driving in one day.

So now you don’t have to pay for fuel, your fleet can leave the business everyday with full range, no ICE vehicles can say that. Once you start add up the numbers on cost saving its unavoidable for any company. And just the way of doing business.

And yes there are electric vans and full size trucks.

Most new house will just add solar to there bond with a full battery as backup. In 2022 an 2023 the private sector added 6000MW+ of solar and well over 1000MW+ in Q1 of 2024 with no slowing down insight, the private sector know what needs to be done and are doing it themselves. Energy independence is the only way forward.  

Battery storage

Battery storage is the future and it’s the sleeping giant that will stabilise the grid. Now I am talking about the Tesla MegaPacks, which is a 4MW battery the size of a container that can power 1400 homes for 4 hours at 1mw output, with a 1MW invertor will take around 4 hours to charge.

Let me put it into perspective for you. The Karpowership contract with Eskom is R218billion over two decades . A Tesla Megapack with a 3.9MW output is R25 Million each. That equals 8720 mega packs and 34,008MW of emergency power. Tesla can make 10000 per year as per 2023. Load shedding shortfall is around 6000-7000MW. So how do we charge these megapacks!

So we should scrap the Karpowership idea and take that money and put half of that into mega packs so now we have 17 004MW of emergency power, that will be charged but the other R109 Billion, that $5.7 Billion USD we can install 15700MW of solar at a cost of 363usd per watt, which will be cheaper in South Africa. Once the batteries are charged this solar will feed into the grid! Its enough solar alone to end loadshedding. But if we are going to spend this money then may as well use it correctly. This is quick to install unlike power plants that take up to 10 years to build.

We have options to end loadshedding and to do so quickly.

If we can arrange this type of set up, Eskom should remain there to provide baseline power and solar and batteries can step in to fill the void. I don’t see government getting orgised any time soon and I see the private sector becoming more and more energy independent, looking towards technology and the future to solve their issues rather then government.

We will wake up one day and see South Africa as the unintentional post child of energy independents and EV’s.