Faizel Patel – 25/03/2021
As South Africa looks for alternative energy and power sources, a renewable energy project could be built near Matjiesfontein in the Karoo that would emerge as the largest hybrid energy project in Africa.
The Oya Energy Hybrid Facility combines solar, wind and lithium-ion battery storage to contribute 128MW of electricity a year, which will assist South Africa’s electricity woes.
The facility is one of eight projects signed off by government under South Africa’s Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme which aims to bring an urgent 2,000MW to the grid.
Speaking to Radio Islam, Dr Killian Hagemann, co-founder of G7 Renewable Energies and director of Oya says the plant will use wind turbines and solar photovoltaic array, combined with battery storage, to generate power.
“It’s just the size that we have in mind, roughly 83MW of wind power combined with 155MW solar PV that hasn’t been done on this scale before on the continent and it’s very unique in that way.”
Dr Hagemann says government has requested dispatchable power.
“It’s flexible power that Eskom can switch on and off as and when they need it. So as and when there is typically load shedding, they would instead switch on power plants like ours to deliver power and then when the situation normalises than they’ll switch us off again. They are asking for power between 5am in the morning and 9:30pm in the evening.”
Dr Hagemann says their power plant together with the seven other bidders could go a long way in alleviating pressure on Eskom’s electricity grid.
Listen to the interview with Dr Killian Hagemann
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