Green Options

Eskom, the South African state owned electricity generator, recently announced that it has budgeted a billion dollars over the next ten years for a demonstration and pilot concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. However, moving from budget to implementation is proving more difficult!

Why Concentrated Solar Power

Two of the widely used alternatives for collecting the suns energy are the concentrated solar power (CSP) plant where sunlight is focussed on a receiver in which a circulating working fluid is heated and used as the heating media for a conventional power station and the photo voltaic (PV) plant where sunlight is converted directly into electrical energy.

The South African government and the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) have signed an Memorandum Of Understanding to develop a plan, before year end, to establishment a Solar Park in the Northern Cape.

If the black areas above were covered with PV panels, it would provide all the world’s energy needs.

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) is convinced that the contribution of solar energy to the world’s energy needs is about to boom. It is already developing projects in India, Australia and in the South Western States of the US. Now it is co-operating with the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) to develop a Solar Park in the Northern Cape that would speed up South Africa’s uptake of renewable energy.