The potential to produce electricity from wind turbines in SA is significantly greater and much more widely spread than initially thought.
This is according to a joint research study conducted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), in collaboration with the South African Energy Development Institute, Eskom and the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems in Kassel, Germany.
"The overarching objective of this study was to increase the fact base and the understanding of aggregated wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) profiles in South Africa for different spatial distributions of a hypothetical wind and solar PV fleet," says Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz, head of the CSIR's Energy Centre.
"The study outputs can serve as input into South African energy-planning processes, such as the Integrated Energy Plan, the Integrated Resource Plan for electricity, strategic grid planning, the Transmission Development Plan, and wind and solar PV Strategic Environmental Assessments."
According to the study, more than 80% of SA's land mass has enough wind resource for economic wind farms with very high annual load factors of greater than 30%.
It also points out that SA exhibits low seasonality in both wind and solar PV supply, which makes the integration easier, because no seasonal storage is required to balance fluctuations.
"The magnitude and cost competiveness of wind power in South Africa is on par with that of solar PV. In addition, wind and solar PV are complementary, with wind supply peaking in the evening and solar PV peaking at midday," says Crescent Mushwana, research group leader at the CSIR's Energy Centre.
Renewable energy development zones (REDZs) for wind and solar PV selected by the Department of Environmental Affairs are a good starting point, he notes.
"When expanding the REDZ further, the study shows the wind resource should not be the limiting factor in the selection of these zones, but the focus should be mostly on environmental considerations."
According to the CSIR, the total technical wind power potential in SA if wind farms were to be installed across the country except in exclusion areas (national parks, settlement areas, etc) is 6 700GW, which is a wind fleet large enough to supply the entire world's electricity demand.
To generate 250TWh/yr, which is approximately today's South African electricity demand, 0.6% of the available South African land mass would have to be dedicated for wind farms with an installed capacity of approximately 75GW, the research institute says.
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