Develop renewables while sun shines

When sunshine is available across the country for 73 percent of the annual daylight period, it is disturbing that homes and businesses suffer the anxiety of precarious electricity supply, when clean solar alternatives are glaringly available. Clean, yes, but not cheap, at least not at capital expenditure level. And therein lies the rub. As cost effective as solar is in the long-term and as naturally abundant as it is, high initial costs mean it is limited to small domestic or industrial level, while the coal-fuelled national grid yearns for alternative support.

It is curious then that other economies as close as South Africa and Namibia, have been able to initiate – to various extents – some form of national level solar generation.It is also curious that at home, where the BPC is the largest generator of power and the single buyer of all independent electricity, policymakers have thus far been unable to think around the capital intensity of solar generation.