CSP proponents upset by draft plan exclusion
PROPONENTS of concentrated solar power (CSP) yesterday voiced their disappointment at the exclusion of CSP in the draft integrated resource plan (IRP).
As expected, energy players used the department of energy’s consultation workshop on the IRP to make strong arguments for their chosen technologies.
Speaking at the workshop in Boksburg yesterday, Jayesh de Silva of CSP technology provider, BrightSource said the company, which he said had a pipeline of projects in South Africa, was “quite concerned” that the draft IRP had been issued with no CSP.
De Silva said the input assumptions used in the IRP were outdated “and do not reflect the latest expected bid round CSP costs. CSP dispatchability needs to be accounted for within the IRP analysis. CSP with thermal storage can substitute baseload, midmerit and peak plant. CSP Tower is competitive in South Africa in terms of levelised costs against technologies such as combined cycle gas.”
The department released the plan last month and is soliciting input on the assumptions and scenarios it made in relation to plans for future energy capacity. De Silva said the IRP’s gas assumptions could be underestimating combined cycle gas turbines and open cycle gas turbines.
He said the department had used a modelling that assumed that gas prices would remain constant at R115.5 per gigajoule (GJ) for the next 35 years, adding that such an assumption was unrealistic in the face of published data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has predicted a rise in gas prices. Such a rise would make CSP cost effective.
He said the IRP assumptions did not take into account the environmental, health and “wider social” costs associated with fossil fuel pollution. “CSP has no fuel costs which removes commodity price risk, foreign exchange risk and should save South African foreign reserves that would be needed to import liquefied natural gas,” said De Silva.
The Nuclear Industry Association of SA (Niasa), which is propagating the development of a nuclear industry in South Africa, also took issue with the zero-carbon costs and the assumptions about the costs of gas.
Niasa’s Dawid Serfontein said it was because coal was not penalised for carbon emissions. As a result of that stance, at R0.89 per kilowatt-hour, coal was cheaper than nuclear (R0.97/kWh). “Therefore nuclear squeezed out to 2037,” said Serfontein.
He said if a R0.26/kW carbon cost was “rightly” added, coal’s true cost would move up to R1.15/kWh, “which is much more expensive than the competing options. Coal would then be replaced by nuclear at R0.97/kWh. Therefore, nuclear should then come in well before 2037.
Gas prices assumption per gigajoule