The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) study, which factored tariffs, savings on fuel costs and avoided load shedding, showed that economies delivered by wind and PV have increased ten-fold since last year, when the net savings equalled ZAR 800m over 12 months.
The CSIR forecasts that these savings will continue to rise significantly while the country remains severely grid-constrained and the costs of expensive open-cycle gas turbine (around ZAR 5/kWh) and load shedding (ZAR 75/kWh) are offset by the increasing amount of green electricity feeding on to the grid.
The competitive nature of the government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer’s Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) has ensured costs of wind and solar have fallen with every new bidding round: wind is 60-70 cents per KWh, with solar close to 80 cents.
The CSIR figures are based on operating power plants that were bid in earlier bidding round at higher costs of 1.65 cents per KWh for wind and 1.98 cents for solar. As the projects secured at lower prices hit the grid, savings will escalate.
"Renewables can easily outcompete new coal. Wind has already reached grid parity and solar is close," Johan van den Berg , executive chair of the South African Renewable Energy Council (SAREC), tells Recharge. "Already The REIPPPP Round 4 wind farms on average outperform an Eskom fleet made up largely of 30-year-old, amortised coal plants.
“Add the substantial benefit of renewable energy when addressing South Africa’s electricity shortage, where we avoid load-shedding hours at more than 100 times the cost of the latest wind and solar energy prices, or generation in open-cycle gas turbines - at more than four times the cost. This causes the net cost of wind and solar to drop below zero."
