South Africa has a unique situation that gives the country access to many reliable renewable energy sources. These include wind,solar and tidal and industry is slowly but surly starting to gear up for a greener lifestyle.
- These are some of the projects that as on the table already.
- Eskom has a 3.2 MW demonstration wind farm at Klipheuwel in the Western Cape.
- The 4-turbine,5.2MW Darling wind farm in the Western Cape started producing electricity in 2008 and remains the country’s only commercial wind farm.
- Irish company Mainstream Renewable Energy,in partnership with local outfit Genesis Eco-Energy,are planning to build some 18 wind farms in the Eastern,Western and Northern Cape,including 30 and 40 MW projects near Jeffrey’s Bay and Colesberg respectively.
- Eskom has proposed a 100 MW wind farm at Koekenaap near Vredendal in the Western Cape.
- Belgian company Electrawinds recently announced a partnership deal for a 25-turbine wind farm at Coega in the Eastern Cape.
- The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality plans to build a wind farm with at least 10 turbines.
- UK-based Renewable Energy Systems has proposed to install around 300 MW of wind energy projects in the Western and Eastern Cape.
- The planned St Helena Bay wind farm on the West Coast is expected to produce 50 to 80 MW of electricity.
- A 300 MW wind farm project near Caledon in the Western Cape was announced earlier this year.
- The Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm project in the Eastern Cape aims to produce about 40 MW by 2013.
- In October last year,government and the Clinton Foundation signed an agreement to establish the country’s first “solar park”,which is to deliver up to 5 000 MW of solar electricity to the national grid.
- Cape Town start-up Aurora Power Solutions is developing a 200 MW portfolio of solar power projects.
- Eskom is planning a 100 MW concentrated solar power demonstration plant near Upington.
- A factory for thin-film solar panels is to be built in Paarl.
what are the renewable and nonrenewable resources of s.a.?
and where can they be found?
Renewable energy sources in South Africa would include Solar,wind,and tide. Many area’s in the Northern,Western and Southern Cape are ideal for solar and wind where as any coastal area around the country could be used for tidal energy. There is currently a Wind farm in Darning in the Western Cape that is supply electricity from wind turbines.
A non renewable energy sources would be coal. Coal in extensively mines in the Northern parts of South Africa.
Thanks for
your sharing,it’s very useful
I can’t understand when they talk about renewable resource
great.. Website.. Gav quite sum info 4 a reseach project m doin!
has south africa got sufficient energy resources to produce for future demands?
South Africa is in a unique situation where the country has more than enough resources to produce energy for future energy demand. Unfortunately we are still relying on coal powered power stations to supply energy for our future needs. This is however not neccesary. Parts of South Africa receive enough wind and sun to supply energy for our entire nation.
Strangely enough coal and nuclear power stations are heavily reliant on water and this is a commodity that the country will soon be running short of.
To even contemplate the thought of building desalination plants to supply water to these dirty,water guzzling monsters is silly as desalination itself requires masses of power.
What about hydro. it produces about 5% of south africas electricity. but some may argue that it causes more pollution by the rotting vegetation which produce methane. what about the potential for bioenergy? south africa has a lot of sugar cane,which once processed,the waste can be used to generate electricity by conversion to baggas.
Hydropower is indeed a great source of generating power and to some degree it allows the grid to supply a greater base load even when power use levels drop.
Hydropower would just require us to have water in our dams and that does not always seem to be the case.