Solar power may rescue consumers

ÜGEN VOS

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa could soon be churning out half-a-million cheap, hyper-efficient, thin solar panels every year – giving the man on the street a welcome breather from steep electricity tariffs.

This ray of light comes courtesy of an innovative private-public partnership between Sasol, the Central Energy Fund (CEF) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

This should culminate in the construction of a R900-million thin solar panel plant in the Western Cape, producing over 200MW of electricity.

Construction on the plant will proceed as soon as equipment guarantees have been signed – theoretically bringing it online by late 2012.

Sasol, with a 40% stake in the enterprise, now wants a demonstration unit built to showcase the project’s potential.

UJ professor Vivian Alberts’s photovoltaic research group began research on a viable alternative to silicon-based solar options 15 years ago, eventually hitching their wagons to a semiconductor based on copper, indium, gallium and selenium.

The substance is highly flexible, three quarters thinner than a human hair, easily recyclable, doesn’t degrade over time and costs up to 50% less than the silicon-based models currently used for solar power generation.

Alberts believes between 10 and 20 such panels (or the equivalent of a living room floor) could easily provide a standard home with all its electricity needs, while a few hundred such panels should be able to power “a small town”.

Alberts’s panels can generate enough energy to run appliances from stoves, to fridges and computers, feeding energy directly into existing wiring through a special converter – effectively making a home self-sufficient for power generation.

The unique photo-responsive alloy is almost 100 times thinner than a silicon cell and can convert energy from a broader light spectrum than silicon-based counterparts making energy generation possible even under low-light conditions and during winter.

Alberts is contractually barred from discussing the estimated final price-tag for his panels, but estimates hover at around R490 per 60-watt panel or R8 a watt, compared to between R30 and R40 for imported silicon panels.

By contrast, an inferior 50-watt silicone panel will cost you around R1 500.

If this proves an accurate projection, it would theoretically make weaning a standard home off the Eskom grid for a once-off cost of between R5 000 and R10 000 quite feasible. And once greater production and competition kicks in, this cost should drop even further.

Eskom wants a 45% tariff hike every year for the next three years, potentially making this a very attractive option for households and companies facing a crippling escalation in electricity bills. The technology’s low input costs also make it more accessible to the poor, and an attractive option for low-cost housing.

“The global solar market is growing by 40% per annum, and we’ll definitely want to export some electricity, but the goal is definitely also to produce energy for general use on the local market,” said Alberts yesterday.

Alberts said he thought it was quite possible that his panels would be available to the average consumer within the next two to three years.

The private-public partnership initially expects to produce half-a-million photo-voltaic panels with an output of 40MW per year, going mostly towards off-grid resorts and rural areas. It might also help to meet the on-grid demand for standby power.