Renewable Energy Challenges in Southern Africa

Challenges to the large-scale deployment of renewable energy in the Southern African context

Rapid deployment of Renewable Energy (RE) is currently planned in Southern Africa. Due to the intermittent and localised nature of RE, the following challenges can be expected to the deployment of RE in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP - Power pool stretching from the DRC in the North to the southern tip of Africa in the South):

Transmission Expansion
Intermittency
Change in Generation areas

Transmission Expansion

The South African power utility, Eskom, is planning extensive Transmission Expansion to deal with the deployment of RE in parts of South Africa where no or little generation capacity was deployed in the past. The Eskom Transmission Development Plan (TDP - see https://www.eskom.co.za/Whatweredoing/TransmissionDevelopmentPlan/Pages/Transmission_Development_Plans.aspx) states that R 117 751 million needs to be spent to, among other things, integrate 31 649 MW of mostly RE into the South African Transmission grid.

This is a huge task and as the TDP states: "Transmission’s infrastructure for the IRP2019 to integrate ~ 30GW of new capacity would require an acceleration to the execution programme , hence placing huge demands on limited resources across the value chain (including suppliers and construction industry)" and "Capex curtailment…