Powering Development: A Pathway to Integrating Rooftop Solar PV into Municipal Electricity Distribution

By Tracy Ledger South Africa needs more electricity, more reliable electricity and cheaper electricity. Many municipalities have failed to take sufficient note of the opportunity provided by small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) such as rooftop solar and battery systems installed by residents. In some cases, they actively work to erase that opportunity by taking a punitive approach towards SSEG installations. This approach is based on the erroneous assumption that the only impact of this infrastructure for the municipality is negative. The majority of these installations are residential, and most of them produce ‘excess’ electricity on average over a twelve-month period; electricity that could be produced by the system, but which is curtailed because it has no place to go. This excess electricity is potentially available to municipalities at a rate almost half that which is currently paid to Eskom. We have estimated that the value of that excess power (based on existing installations) could be just over R2.5bn per annum by 2035, to the Gauteng municipalities. Paradoxically, many municipalities are publicly declaring a desire to diversify electricity supply while actively working to extinguish the cheapest (and already built at someone else’s expense) source of that supply which is literally in their backyard. [heading]In the Media