Major role for gas in energy transition

THE UPDATED Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) should outline a prominent role for gas in the transition from coal to renewable energy, according to Sola Future Energy chief executive Dominic Wills.

The IRP is a long-term plan for the electricity sector and identifies the generation capacity required and timing based on input assumptions and predefined constraints.

The IRP 2010, promulgated in March 2011, envisaged 11400MW of new renewable energy capacity by 2030, 9600MW new nuclear capacity, 6300MW coal capacity and 11 000 MW of other generation sources.

In 2016, the Department of Energy released the draft IRP 2016, which has a horizon of up to 2050. The key assumptions in the IRP 2016 included electricity demand forecasts, existing plant performance, supply technology costs and decommissioning schedules.

The department is yet to release an updated IRP, which will contain revised allocations for the different technologies.

Once the updated IRP is published in the Government Gazette, the Minister of Energy, Jeff Radebe, will make determinations informed by the gazetted IRP on electricity generation capacity to be procured.

Wills said yesterday that, if done purely on logic and mathematical models, with the correct assumptions, gas would play a significant role in the transition to renewables.

“It is cheap to install and, although it is expensive to run, the actual running hours are low. It is an appropriate technology because it also reacts quicker,” said Wills.

Finite resource Wills said the heavy reliance on a finite resource such as coal to meet the country’s energy demands was not sustainable. He said the cost of new solar was about half the cost of new coal.

“New coal production facilities come in at around R1.05 to R1.16 per kilowatt hour (kWh), while new solar comes in at 50c to 64c per kWh,” he said.

Wills said the cost of harnessing solar and the cost of storing its energy would decrease in years to come, while the cost of coal would only increase.

“The country has a gap in which we can start to build solar projects, both on a commercial and municipal scale, to take the strain off the coal-burning grid. As the price of solar batteries begins to reduce – driven by the electric car market – we need to simply add energy storage into the existing infrastructure.”

Wills said a high penetration of wind and solar energy could be added to the national grid without incurring costly changes to the system’s existing infrastructure.

“As renewable energy and storage become cheaper, the country needs to use its remaining coal resources to manage the transition to a zero-carbon grid. This will alleviate uncertainty around whether South Africa has capacity to meet its future energy demands,” Wills said.