By DESTINE NDE
Until recently, the unreliability of South Africa’s main energy supplier was no longer news — power shortages and loadshedding were the norm. But the situation has improved significantly. The last instance of loadshedding was just before the last elections, some eight months ago. Since that time, South Africans have been enjoying an uninterrupted supply of energy.
But despite this impressive improvement, most South Africans are still uncertain about whether depending on this supplier as their only energy source is the best option going forward. They have been disappointed once too many. As the adage goes: ‘Once bitten, twice shy.’ Or, better still, ‘Never put all your eggs in one basket.’
It is interesting to wonder about how our ancestors survived and even thrived without resources like carbon-based fuel, electricity, and so on. These are among the most basic necessities in all civilized societies. The human world would literary crash if diesel, petrol and electrical power were taken away. Take modern farmers, for example: they cannot operate without diesel and electricity. Their tractors and other heavy machinery are all powered by diesel or electrical power. For this reason, many farmers are turning to solar energy as a more reliable and cheaper source of electricity.
In the Klein Karoo, for example, almost all the farmers are turning to solar power. Every farm in this area has at least one solar installation. They are quite expensive to set up — the solar panels, batteries, inverters, cables, frames, and labour are all costly. However, in the longer term, the benefits are major and cumulative. But for the cost, every farmer would have converted fully to solar energy.
In fact, there are rumours that the farmers in this area intend to sue their energy supplier. Many are complaining bitterly about having to pay huge bills for electricity they don’t believe they use. Their argument is quite persuasive, and goes like this: their forefathers who were farming at the time when rural areas were electrified had to pay the supplier to be connected to the electricity grid. The distance from the last electricity pole to the farm in question was measured, and the farmer was then charged a certain amount per kilometre.
The installation costs were a one-time fee. Seeing that these were large sums, the supplier decided to let farmers pay it off in instalments. As a result, their electricity bills were always much higher than those of other consumers. Today, two or even three generations down the line, the current farmers are still paying high electricity bills. No one knows whether the initial installation costs have been paid off or not. If it has, their monthly electricity bills are supposed to be much lower. On the contrary, they keep on rising, even though most of them are reducing their grid consumption to the minimum, and increasingly reverting to solar energy.
I got all this information from a very reliable source, the chief electrician of KAD Electronics—the most humble, capable, passionate, conscientious and experienced electrician you can hope to meet. He has installed most of the solar plants in this part of the Klein Karoo, including the Baviaans Kloof, and sometimes as far as Cape Town.
On 9 December 2024 we met coincidentally at the Department of Social Development offices in Willowmore. We chatted for a while, and he told me that he was about to do his biggest job ever: installing a giant solar plant at Bhejane, a farm, and game reserve in the picturesque Groot River Valley, halfway between Steytlerville and Willowmore.
‘There are 72 large solar panels to be put up,’ he informed me. ‘The battery is huge. It weighs at least a ton. The biggest I’ve ever worked with. We’re going to need a crane to lift it into place. The inverter is also large, weighing at least a hundred kilograms.’
He told me that he intended to start the job on 12 December. He would have to collect the panels, battery and inverter in George, and transport them to the site in Fullerton. He kindly invited me to come along, and I agreed.
So it came that, at around 11 on the morning of 13 December, we were off-loading huge solar panels at Bhejane. They were so big that only half the total could be transported at one time. The second half had to be transported and offloaded on Monday 16 December, and the fearfully heavy battery and inverter on Tuesday.
The farm manager, Phillip Theunissen, said they were now going to rely almost completely on solar energy, and only use Eskom power in emergency situations. They were still paying the latter something like R30 000 a month (in fact their last bill was R33, 000), while most of the appliances in the farm were running on solar power. ‘We’re tired of this nonsense,’ he added.
Going solar will cost them about R1 million, but staying with their previous supplier will cost them at least R3, 600, 000 for electricity bills over the next ten years. So it’s definitely a good investment – after the initial capital expenditure, all their power will be free. What is more, these solar installations need little or no servicing, especially during the first couple of years.
All that would be required in the future is for sunlight to strike the surface of the panels. They are made from semi-conducting materials, mostly silicon (Si). The energy absorbed from the sunlight releases the electrons from their bonds, in effect creating negative and positive charges, in the form of free electrons and empty holes (the gaps created when an electron escapes). These positive and negative charges are separated by what is known as a p-n junction, effectively creating a positive (p) and negative (n) terminal.
As a result, the negative charges or electrons start to flow toward the positive charges or holes, thus generating electric current. The inverter then converts this direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC), which is used to run electrical appliances in the farm. Excess energy is stored in the battery, so that even at night, when there is no sunlight, and the panels are no longer generating any current, there is a steady supply of electricity.
These 72 panels can generate 40KW of electricity per hour, translating into 400 Kilowatt hour (KWh) per day—assuming the average time of daylight is 10 hours. That’s equal to 400 units of electricity per day, and 12, 000 units per month—enough to power the household and all the electrical farming and other equipment on the reserve. This same amount of Eskom electricity would have cost them R3,200 a day, and a whopping R96, 000 a month.
We had a difficult time offloading and placing the massive battery – in fact, we had to use a hydraulic lift, fitted to the front of a farm tractor. All 72 panels were installed and connected in series of 12. Two parallel series were then connected together, creating a circuit of 24 panels. There were three such circuits, designated as Line 1, Line 2 and Line 3 (each generating at least 13KW/hour). These three lines were then connected to the inverter, and from the inverter to the battery. And then it all came to life – I saw 40kW displayed on the screen of the inverter.
I was delightfully impressed by all this. The simplicity, ingenuity, reliability, and, in the main, the unimaginable potential and beauty of nature! So I could not help but to declare to my wife that we do have a bright future.
