Martina Schäfer, Noara Kebir, Daniel Philipp (editors) - TU Berlin

PROCEEDINGS Conference MPDES 2011
Figure 1: Map of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa indicating the study locations (Amigun et al., 2010)
The policy position of South Africa highlights access to
affordable energy services for the disadvantaged
communities, and delivering sustainable energy services
for the national development process. It also provides
direction to the restructuring of the fragmented and
ineffective electricity distribution industry in order to
introduce more competition to the sector. To this end,
long-winded stakeholder processes were implemented,
some of which are still under way (IISD, 2009).
The population of South Africa will continue to grow
for several decades to come; and the energy supply will
increase to meet the escalating demand. There are
diverging opinions as to whether the energy demand will
continue to be served predominantly by extensive grid
systems, or whether there will be a strong trend to
distributed, or decentralised, generation that is close to the
point of use. This is an important policy question but,
regardless, it will not preclude the need for more largescale
grid supplied power, most especially in urbanised
locations, over the next several decades.
Study context
The Eastern Cape is the second largest province of South
Africa with proportionally large rural populations; in the
order of 62% of the total population. A large part of the
Eastern Cape Province (see Figure 1) is from the former
homelands of South Africa, where there are high levels of
poverty. South Africa’s GDP per capita is $2,500 while
the Eastern Cape Province’s is $432.
The case study locations (see Figure 1) belong to the
previously underserviced and rural communities in South
Africa, with significant natural renewable resources. In
addition, like other remote areas of the South Africa, it
contains many settlements, mainly hamlets and isolated,
‘sparse’ dwellings, with strong socioeconomic drivers for
community energy schemes, due to the lack of grid
electricity supply. An initial renewable energy feasibility
assessment was conducted in July 2009 by the Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in association
with the local communities. The feasibility assessment
indicates that small-scale wind turbines, solar PV, and
biomass (woodfuel and anaerobic digestion) could serve
as a source of energy supply. The analysis of this paper is
based on this assessment. The technology options
considered for the conversion of renewable resources to
electricity in this study are described in Table 2.
Table 2: Electricity generation technology options, corresponding end-uses and status
Conversion Resource Examples of Product End-use Technology
technology Type fuels
Status
Photovoltaic Solar (sun) Solar (sun) Heat & electricity Heat, Electricity Commercial
Gasification Mainly
solid
biomass
Anaerobic
Digestion
Wet
Biomass
Wood chips
and pellets,
agricultural
Residues
Manure,
sewage
Sludge
Product gas Heat (boiler), Electricity
(engine, gas turbine, fuel
cell, combined cycles),
Transport fuels (methanol,
hydrogen)
Biogas +
by-products
Heat (boiler), Electricity
(engine, gas turbine, fuel
cell), Transport fuel
Demonstration/
Early commercial
Commercial
Wind Wind Wind Heat & electricity Heat, Electricity Commercial
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