Times Live Online
29 January 2013

South Africa has a burgeoning solar photovoltaic (PV) industry, which has for many years been supplying PV power to remote installations that are not connected to the Eskom grid.

Schools and clinics in rural areas, as well as cellphone masts dotted all over the country, have demonstrated the effectiveness of PV in these situations. But despite an abundance of solar radiation, we have been slow to follow the lead set by southern European and Brics countries in building large solar PV farms to generate power. Now South Africa has boldly followed in their footsteps, with the first large-scale renewable energy projects having been signed off by the Department of Energy. Read more…