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Offices, Shops Could Hold Answers to South Africa’s Power Woes
(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s commercial property industry has the potential to ease the country’s power crisis, with enough roof space to generate 4.7 gigawatts of electricity, a new study has found.
Retail, office and industrial properties in the country’s five biggest cities have 68.7 million square meters (739 million square feet) of rooftops that have no solar panels, according to the study by Gmaven, a South African real estate software and data services company.
Installing solar panels on two-thirds of commercial properties in those cities’ main nodes would cost as much as 55 billion rand ($3 billion), yet they could generate electricity that leads to 12.3 billion rand of savings each year, Gmaven said. Just 6.4% of the 41,000 properties it surveyed already have panels in place.
South Africa’s government has cited rooftop solar as one of the solutions to a 15-year power crisis that has worsened to the extent that rotational blackouts have been imposed almost every day this year, the worst of them lasting as as long as 12 hours a day.
Properties held by Resilient REIT Ltd., a real estate investment trust, plan to have 68 megawatts of installed solar capacity by the end of this year, while Growthpoint Properties Ltd. is aiming for 46 megawatts by 2026, according to Gmaven.
The study didn’t assess the cost of battery backup to store excess solar power generated during the day.
“Unlike in the residential space, the commercial property sector’s major electricity consumption is during daytime hours,” Gmaven said. “The industry’s peak power needs are broadly matched by peak solar radiation.”
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It would be useful to add the potential of solar installations in private homes. How much has been installed and what is the potential? And why not give households credit for electricity sent back to the grid? My panels have huge spare capacity from about 11.00 when the batteries have been charged, and until sunset. Why not use this?
Until they change their mindset you are trying to talk common sense into the head of those who do not understand common sense. All they want to do is buy power from you at R 1 kWhr to resell back to you at 4 times the price. I want to trade kWhrs not rands and until and unless I can do that I have little interest in allowing my investment in batteries to be used by anyone else.
Heads of government, not state. Both Denmark and the Netherlands are monarchies with their respective monarchs as head of state.