Solar powerhouse lights up Sandveld
Paleisheuwel plant to add 85 MW to grid; electricity for 35 000 households
PALEISHEUWEL, in the middle of the West Coast/Sandveld region has never been famous for anything, really, except very good sandy soil in which to plant potatoes and a frequently good harvest of rooibos tea.
Many years ago, there was a functioning railway station on the line to Lambert’s Bay.
There was a blacksmith and a wagon repair workshop. There were also a few houses and a low bridge where the railway line crossed a reed-choked river. The general dealer is still there, smelling like lye soap and selling just about anything over the counter. If you do not take into consideration the modern cars and trucks on the mostly gravel R365 that runs by towards Lambert’s Bay, or the now dilapidated state of many of the old station buildings, you could have sworn time had stood still in this tiniest of villages.
But just four or so kilometres further along the road, something has happened that forcibly shoved the small burg into the 21st century, almost against its will.
And this is because the Paleisheuwel (translated as Palace Hill) area is now home to one of the largest solar power generating projects in the country.
Contractors are well advanced along the path to mount 611 000 solar panels in long rows on galvanised steel structures and connect it to the national grid to add 85 Megawatts of electricity to Eskom supply.
If you had to ask why, environmental site officer Almi van Wyk will explain that the solar plant did not need to benefit from the area – the area needed to benefit from the plant. And that was the ultimate goal after the obvious profit-making one.
“We could have put the plant somewhere in the desert, but there would have been no community to benefit from the jobs. It was a requirement that the plant had to provide jobs and this area certainly benefits,” she said.
The 85 Megawatts of power to be generated by this plant will be enough to provide electricity to 35 000 households, said project manager Roberto Rossi of Italy, who works for the main contractor, TerniEnergia Projects South Africa, the local branch of the Italian parent company of the same name.
TerniEnergia has signed a contract to engineer, procure and construct two solar photovoltaic (PV) plants in South Africa, totalling an output of some 145 MW. One plant has already been built in the Northern Cape.
TerniEnergia is building this plant for the Italian-owned energy supplier Enel Green Power, which will sell the electricity generated here and at its other plants into the Eskom grid.
Rossi said the panels generated about 1 000 watts for every square metre of panel area and begins generating at first light of day.
The main contractor welcomed school visits to the site, even now during construction, and had a programme in place to generate funds for the local schools through the sale and recycling of the waste packaging materials at the site.
Packaging materials included wood from pallets and crate frames in which the solar panels were delivered to the site by truck and scrap steel left over from the construction of the frames that would bear the panels for their 25-year lifetime.
Most of the workers on site were from the local area and often the schoolchildren benefiting from the fundraising and educational experiences were the children of the workers. At the Paleisheuwel Station village, owner Van Zyl Brink is happy with the arrival of the solar plant.
“There has definitely been an improvement in the local economy,” he said.
“It has been good for us. And I am told about 350 permanent jobs will be created once the construction is over. There are only about 350 farmers in the area, so it is double the original population.”