Unlocking the potential of solar energy
Historically, South Africa was considered one of the countries with the cheapest electricity, but prices increased by more than 177% between 2010 and 2020. The escalation has resulted in a profit squeeze for most businesses, with power cuts and intermittent supplies adding to this financial burden.
RenEnergy, a UK-based supplier of solar power solutions, expanded into South Africa in 2012.
“Britain experienced a massive solar power boom around 2010, thanks to heavy subsidies,” explains Claude Peters, managing director of RenEnergy Africa. “But interest in South Africa, in spite of its solar energy potential being among the best in the world, only really took off four years ago, due to the technology becoming cheaper and more competitive in comparison with Eskom prices, and loadshedding making supply unreliable.”
The business environment was also unfriendly towards alternative energy, with legislation and finance being the biggest restrictions previously.
“Eskom simply wasn’t geared and had to reverse-engineer to accommodate systems that were connected to the grid, whereas traditional banking institutions weren’t positioned to comfortably
