| dc.description.abstract | South Africa‟s electricity generation is primarily through coal, and this contributes significantly to the country‟s high carbon emissions. In 2010, the Department of Energy, initiated the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010–2030 as part of the government‟s redefinition of its energy portfolio and commitment to wind energy development. This, most recent, IRP document proposes 8.4 GW new-build installed wind capacity by 2030. While a significant percentage of this proposed capacity is expected to be generated by large scale wind turbines, the IRP document also recommends contributions and further research in off-grid technologies and activities. However, off-grid small wind technology is still at infancy in South Africa, with very little development thus far. Therefore, this sector needs to be further researched and developed, for these small wind technologies to contribute to the proposed GW. Towards the development of the small wind sector in South Africa, two developmental variables – policy and technology performance – were examined, as key factors often responsible for the failure or underdevelopment of renewable energy projects include inconsistent government policies, poor technology and relatively poor productivity, administrative hurdles, bureaucracy, and non-transparent permitting procedures (Beck et al., 2004; Gross et al., 2010; Schwerin, 2010). Therefore, this research evaluated the effects of the available policies benefitting small wind systems and technology performance of these systems on the viability and future growth of the sector in the country, and proposed an alternative development path to overcome the limitations.
The policy evaluation involved comparing and analysing the effects of the support policies for small wind sectors in South Africa and the U.S and UK (developed sectors) on the growth of the sector. The results revealed the different levels of deployment in the three countries are largely influenced by the return-risk factors. While both the U.S. and UK small wind markets are considered as developed and SA still infancy, the deployment level can be categorised as high in the U.S., medium in the UK, and low in SA. The U.S and UK case studies illustrated the synergy between the return and risk factors for best results, while the low level of deployment in SA described what can be expected from a sector with absence of favourable return and risk factors, even though there is a favourable wind resource. In general, the results from the policy evaluation established that, the viability and future growth of the small wind sector in South Africa are limited by the presently available policies benefitting the small wind energy systems. The technology performance evaluation involved analysing the techno-economic performance (energy productivity and economic performance) of small wind energy systems in twelve different locations of South Africa, categorised into four different regions due to the variation in the wind resources of the country and the large expanse of the geographical area. In all the considered sites for the two different-rated turbine models selected for this research, the energy performance results revealed that some locations such as Port Elizabeth and Cape Town provided relatively productive performances, while others yielded poor returns on output. The economic evaluation results established that small wind energy systems are not yet economically viable in the country under the present policies and considered assumptions. Considering small wind generated electricity reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, technically, a very small amount of GHG reduction is achieved according to the relatively low energy outputs of the two turbines analysed, thus, low environmental value is added or achieved. However, the internalisation of external costs of conventional generation in the cost analysis of small wind systems in the country enables the environmental benefits of these systems to be expressed in economic terms, hence, making them fairly competitive. In conclusion, the results established that, the viability and future growth of the small wind sector in South Africa is limited by the technology performance of the systems.
Given that the viability and future growth of the small wind sector in South Africa is limited by the presently available policies benefitting the systems and technology performance, this thesis proposed an alternative development path to overcome the limitations identified. As revealed by this research study, these limitations include insufficient financial incentives; policy uncertainty; poor administrative processes; high investment costs; uncompetitive Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE); and the absence of a plan/path towards a free competitive market and sustainable development. The proposed development path presented two growth paths, termed the advanced-growth and moderate-growth development path to overcome these limitations. The advanced-growth development path, which is incentive-driven, proposes and develops a template for granting investment capital subsidies (grants or loan) to consumers, as a near-term temporary market-pull solution to reduce high up-front costs‟ burden, stimulate demand and realise quick growth of the sector in the country. The moderate-growth development path proposed and analysed a long-term solution involving learning and scale effect mechanisms, to achieve cost reduction and competitiveness of the system, commercial viability, and sustainable growth of the sector | en_US |
