Solar energy revolution beckons
May 05, 2006 Edition 1
John Yeld
Potential local investors meet German industrialists next week to discuss setting up a South African company to manufacture hi-tech solar energy panels developed by South African scientists.
A German company has acquired the initial rights to make thinner and cheaper solar panels developed by local researchers led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) physics professor Vivian Alberts, and goes into full production next March.
These photovoltaic (PV) panels - which generate electricity, as opposed to conventional solar panels that simply heat water directly - will be 50% cheaper than their PV market competitors, and could revolutionise the use of renewable solar energy worldwide if the commercial production and application is successful.
Alberts told the Cape Town Press Club yesterday that the second licence to make the revolutionary new panels would likely go to a local company that would be set up this year.
He said that even two or three of the super-thin panels, which each produce about 60 watts of electricity, could make a tremendous difference to people's lives.
This would be enough to power a home's lights, a television and a computer.
The new panels could particularly benefit 15 million poor people in South Africa who don't have conventional electricity.
"If you give a person just one panel, it will make a significant difference to the lifestyle of that person," Alberts said.
Although the government has invested in the project - Alberts and his team received R13m from the Department of Science and Technology's innovation trust fund, and the Central Energy Fund is one of the potential local investors - it was essential it promoted solar energy through policy changes, he said.
Alberts said 30% of the e25 million technology development costs of the German company, which will produce 400 000 of the 60-watt panels to make up a production capacity of 25 MW a year, were being subsidised by the German government.
"We should and must immediately, without any delay, develop renewable energy resources in this country. Seriously hampering the mass application of solar energy is a lack of efficient government policies to develop and support local PV industries."
Saying solar energy was truly renewable, Alberts pointed out that the sun would last for another 10 billion years, and that just eight seconds of sunlight could provide enough energy to meet South Africa's entire annual energy demand.
"Of course, that's theoretical," he added.
He conceded that currently it cost 10 times as much to set up a photovoltaic solar panel production facility as an equivalent size fossil fuel or nuclear generator.
But the costs would come down with increased production and as conventional fossil fuels became expensive.
Although the first full commercial production of his new panel technology would be in Germany, it would not be lost to South Africa. They were planning to have a commercial company here "within the next few months".
"I foresee that this technology will be developed in this country on a massive scale. It will result in a product you will be able to buy, I predict, within the next few years.
"The technology is there, the will is there, the interest is there, but of course you also need the government's active participation."
The industry to manufacture the panels in Germany was being built in container-size compartments.
"We can really break that industry up and ship it to South Africa. That was the whole idea behind it.
"So what we're trying to do is to duplicate this technology as quickly as possible across the world."
He said he had received "thousands" of phone calls from Capetonians hit by power cuts.
"They're just begging me for three or four panels, so when their power is cut off they can get at least the basic requirements to drive their television and lights in the house.
"So Eskom is creating an enormous additional market for us."
jyeld@incape.co.za
