Develop renewables while sun shines
Mmegi Editor | Thursday July 10, 2014 11:42
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.
However, the local solar sector has long pointed out that South Africa and Namibia’s success has been premised on the provision of incentives or subsidies for the generation of solar. These subsidies are critical to enable solar generation at household level and allow for cost-reflective tariffs for large-scale generators of solar power, which both reduce pressure on the national grid and delay the need for new coal-fuel generation.
Energy policymakers, however, appear content to continue subsidies for coal-fuel, as reflected in the perpetuation of below-cost tariffs at the BPC, while being unwilling to extend any form of similar support for solar energy.
Admittedly, coal-fuel power is critical for Botswana, being the only source for base-load power, where solar by comparison is only available intermittently due to nightfall.However, such arguments do not negate the relief solar energy can provide the national grid via self-generation by households and businesses and also the resultant diversity in the country’s energy supply mix and stability.
At the absolute least, solar power at household, industrial or national level would remove the need for costly diesel-fuel generation, which at Orapa costs taxpayers P2.2 million every 10 hours! We thus applaud UNDP Botswana’s plans to support government in the establishment of a Renewable Energy Fund, which will provide incentives.
Today’s thought
“I’d put my money on the Sun and Solar Energy, what a source of Power! I hope we don’t
have to wait until oil and coal run
out, before we tackle that.”
– Thomas Edison