Cape Town – The South African Photovoltaic Industry Association says solar power is quickly becoming popular among South Africans who are frustrated by load shedding.
The association says that solar photovoltaic providers receive up to 1 700 applications from households per day, with about 75 daily installations.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, association spokesperson Frank Spencer said solar energy is the most affordable way of getting off the grid as the country faces heavy stages of load shedding.
“Solar panels and batteries can be used as the long-term investment being the most affordable option, the average cost of electricity it produces is the lowest of any of the technologies that are available,” he said.
He said that it is the kind of mitigating measure against the load shedding that has exploded over various parts of corporate South Africa and private individuals.
“Although it is worth noting that solar doesn’t give protection against load-shedding, what we’ve seen, particularly in the last year, is that there has been a huge ramp-up in the development of batteries together with solar systems that basically give you both cheap energy from the solar panels as well as protection against the load-shedding from the batteries.”
Spencer said that the advantages of owning solar during high stages of power blackouts are that with just solar installation and the grid supply they work together to provide the electricity and the solar would subsidise the supply that is coming from the grid of Eskom or the municipality.
“The challenge with that is that if there is load shedding the solar plan cannot produce electricity by itself. It needs to work with something else that actually creates the grid if the grid falls away.
"So this why people have been adding batteries, because batteries provide the backup energy to then actually create a local grid so that batteries can give protection against the load-shedding.
“But once the batteries run flat you are obviously back to not having electricity and this is where the reality of coupling together comes from as the solar would then allow the batteries to remain charged or to charge during the day, so that you have backup when power cuts kick in,” Spencer said.
IOL