MONITORING OF RENEWABLE ENERGY

PERFORMANCE

PROGRESS UPDATE FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER 2016/17

ISSUE 9

MARCH 2017

2

Contents

Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations .................................................................... 3

1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ........................................................................................ 6

2. STATUS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS ....................................................................... 9

3. PLANT PERFORMANCE ............................................................................................................. 13

3.1 Daily energy production of solar and wind energy power plants ............................ 13

3.2 Monthly Energy Production ................................................................................... 16

3.3 Load factors of Renewable Energy Power Plants ................................................. 18

4. CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................... 19

ANNEXURE A: GEOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF IPP RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS ................. 20

ANNEXURE B: NEW RENEWABLE ENERGY POWER PLANT ADDITIONS .................................. 23

3

Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

GLOSSARY

BID WINDOW

Means any of the procurement phases under the Renewable Energy Independent

Power Producer Procurement Programme of the Department of Energy.

ENERGY REGULATOR

Means the regulatory authority established as a juristic person in terms of Section 3 of

the National Energy Regulator Act, 2004 (Act No. 40 of 2004).

GOVERNMENT

Means the Government of the Republic of South Africa, and any of its departments,

agencies or other entities that it manages or controls.

GIGAWATT HOUR

Energy unit in which electricity consumption is measured. 1GWh = 1000MWh.

INDEPENDENT POWER PRODUCER (IPP)

IPPs are defined as typically limited-liability, investor-owned enterprises that generate

electricity either for bulk sale to an electric utility or for retail sale to industrial or other

customers with certain conditions.

LOAD FACTOR

Means the ratio of the power plant output over a period of time, to its potential output if

it were possible for it to operate at full nameplate capacity continuously over the same

period of time.

MEGAWATT HOUR

Energy unit in which electricity consumption is measured. 1MWh = 1000kWh.

4

MINISTER

Means Minister of Energy

RENEWABLE ENERGY (from the 2003 White Paper on Renewable Energy)

Renewable energy harnesses naturally occurring non-depletable sources of energy,

such as solar, wind, biomass, hydro, tidal, wave, ocean current and geothermal, to

produce electricity, gaseous and liquid fuels, heat or a combination of these energy

types.

5

ABBREVIATIONS

BW Bid Window

COD Commercial Operation Date

CSIR Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

CSP Concentrated Solar Power

DoE Department of Energy

IPP `. Independent Power Producer

IRP Integrated Resource Plan

LF Load Factor

MW Megawatt

MWh Megawatt hour

GWh Gigawatt hour

NERSA National Energy Regulator

PPA Purchase Power Agreement

PV Photovoltaic

RE Renewable Energy

REIPPP Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer

Programme

RfP Request for Proposal

6

1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Renewable energy in the South African Electricity Supply Industry (ESI) is mainly driven

by the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme

(REIPPPP) of the Department of Energy. The programme was formulated in 2011 in

order to contribute to meeting the national renewable energy targets while encouraging

foreign investment and developing socio-economic and environmentally sustainable

growth. The targets are based on the promulgated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP)

2010-2030 of South Africa.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) supports Government's

Renewable Energy (RE) plans set out in the Integrated Resource Plan 2010-2030

(IRP2010-2030). In order to implement the plan, the Minister has so far made four

Determinations under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme

(REIPPP) of the Department of Energy (DoE). In the first Independent Power Producer

(IPP) Determination, issued in 2011 ('the IPP Determination 2011'), a target of 3 825MW

of RE was set. In the second IPP Determination, ('the IPP Determination 2012), 3

455MW of RE capacity will be procured until 2020.

In the third IPP Determination, ('the IPP Determination 2015'), a procurement of

renewable energy capacity of 6 300MW is envisaged for the period 2021- 2025, in

accordance with the promulgated IRP2010-2030. In total, the renewable energy

capacity to be procured by 2025 is estimated at 13 580MW. In November 2015, the

Minister issued a fourth Determination, (‘the Renewable Energy (Solar) Procurement

Programme 2015’). The Solar Procurement Programme proposes 1 500MW of capacity

to be procured from Solar PV or any other solar technology. Table 1 lists all four

Ministerial Determinations for RE together with the capacity allocation per technology.

Four RE IPPP bid windows, including a mini-bid window of Concentrated Solar Power

(CSP) projects (termed 'Window 3.5'), have been concluded successfully by the

Department of Energy (DoE). According to DoE, the total investment of RE IPP projects

amounts to R192.6 billion and approximately R53.9 billion of that is from foreign

7

investment1. Table 2 below shows the breakdown of capacity allocation per technology

for each bid window. Figure 1 shows the allocation of Bid Window (BW) capacity for

various provinces.

Table 1: Ministerial Determinations for Renewable Energy Performance.

Table 2: Capacity allocation per technology for each Bid Window (BW).

1 Presentation by DoE (23 August 2016), BRIEFING ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN INDEPENDENT POWER PRODUCERS

PROCUREMENT PROGRAMME.

IPP

Procurement

Programme

2011

IPP

Procurement

Programme

2012

IPP Procurement

Programme 2015

IPP

Procurement

Solar 2015

Total to date

Onshore Wind 1 850 1 600 3 040 6 490

Solar PV 1 450 1 200 2 200 4 850*

CSP 200 400 600 1 200*

Biomass 12.5 47.5 150 210

Biogas 12.5 47.5 50 110

Landfill Gas 25 25

Small hydro 75 60 60 195

Small Projects 100 100 200 400

Total Allocation 3 725 3 455 6 300 1 500 14 980

** According to the Ministerial Solar Determination 2015, 1 500MW will be for solar technologies i.e. CSP and Solar PV.

Technology

Ministerial Determinations for Renewable Energy, MW

1 500**

* IPP Solar Procurement 2015 not included.

BW 1 BW2 BW 3 BW 3.5 BW 4

MW MW MW MW MW

Onshore wind 649 559 787 1 362 3 357

Solar PV 627 417 435 813 2 292

CSP 150 50 200 200 600

Small hydro 14 5 19

Landfill gas 18 18

Biomass 17 25 42

Biogas

Total 1426 1040 1457 200 2205 6 328

Total RETechnology

8

Figure 1: RE IPP provincial capacity from Bid Windows 1, 2, 3, 3.5 and 4.

On 26 May 2014, the DoE released the Request for Proposal (RfP) for the fourth bid

window. A total of 77 bids amounting to 5 804MW were received against the available

capacity allocation of 1 105MW. Preferred bidders were announced in two groups. The

first group of 13 preferred bidders were announced on 10 April 2015, while the second

group of 13 preferred bidders were announced on 07 June 2015. Annexure A shows

the location of projects from all four RE IPP bid windows.

In terms of section 4 of the Electricity Regulation Act 2006 (Act No.4 of 2006) ('the Act'),

NERSA has a mandate to 'establish and manage monitoring and information systems

and co-ordinate the integration thereof with other relevant information systems'. The

Renewable Energy (RE) Independent Power Producers (IPPs) are required to submit

reports on their monthly energy production, pursuant to section 15 of Grid Connection

Code for Renewable energy version 2.8 of 2015. The report covers the status of RE

IPP projects and update on performance of the power plants during 2016.

9

2. STATUS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS

There is a concern from the IPPs about reaching financial close of awarded Power

Purchase Agreements of RE IPP projects due to power utility’s concern of risk

associated with prices of some the RE IPP projects. IPPs have argued that prices of

subsequent BWs are much lower that the first BW, and therefore, the utility’s concern

about costs is not valid. A recent article also reported that delays in signing of RE IPP

contracts could have an impact on the development of local manufacturing industry for

some RE technologies such as wind2. Despite these concerns raised by the industry

players, additional RE power plants have reached commercial operation in the last

quarter of 2016. Figure 2 shows new capacity addition from February 2016 to December

2016. As of 31 January 2017, the total grid-connected capacity of RE IPPs is 3 181MW.

Out of this grid-connected capacity, about 2 906MW is in commercial operation.

Figure 2: Total commercial capacity as of 31 January 2017.

Table 3 overleaf shows a list of all REIPPP projects in commercial operation on 31

January 2016. The projects in commercial operation are from BW1, BW2 and BW3 of

REIPPP. The projects highlighted in blue reached commercial operation in the last five

months of the 2016. The aerial photos of the new RE power plants that were recently

added to the grid are shown in ANNEXURE B

2 http://www.energy.org.za/news/eskom-delays-threaten-local-wind-tower-factory, accessed on 13 February 2017.

10

Table 3: REIPPP projects that achieved COD as of 31 January 2017.

11

The monthly cumulative capacity of the RE IPPs in commercial operation is shown in

Figure 3 below. Also shown in the figure is the monthly incremental capacity of

renewable energy power plants since 2013. A capacity of 1 515MW was commissioned

in 2014, another 500MW in 2015 and 884MW in 2016.

Figure 3: Monthly Cumulative commercial capacity of REIPP projects on 31 January 2017.

Figure 4 shows the total RE capacity in commercial operation from inception of REIPP

programme to date. The commercial capacity of wind and solar PV technologies is 1

360MW and 1 329MW, respectively. The CSP capacity in commercial operation is

200MW, while small-hydro is just over 14MW.

12

Figure 4: Commercial capacity of various technologies on 31 January 2017.

Figure 5 below shows the commercial capacity of RE power plants for each province in

South Africa. The Northern Cape has the highest RE capacity in the country due to high

solar energy resource in that province, while the Western and Eastern Cape provinces

follow with RE capacity mainly from wind farms.

Figure 5: Commercial Capacity of renewable energy IPP power plants per province on 31 January 2017.

Contracted: 1 509MW

In operation: 958MW

Contracted: 3565MW

In operation: 1 179MW

Contracted: 592MW

In operation: 509MW

Contracted: 204MW

In operation: 128MW

Contracted: 275MW

In operation: 7MW

Contracted: 17MW

In operation: 0MW

Contracted: 118MW

In operation: 58MW

Contracted: 30MW

In operation 0MW

Contracted: 18MW

In operation: 3MW

13

3. PLANT PERFORMANCE

3.1 Daily energy production of solar and wind energy power plants

The analysis of hourly renewable energy plant performance is based on a sample of

plants that provided timely information to NERSA (see list in Table 5). For the analysis,

solar PV and wind power plants have been selected because of their intermittency. The

total contracted capacity of the analysed sample solar PV and Wind power plants is

approximately 1 440MW.

Table 5: IPP data sources for hourly energy.

Solar PV Power Plants (807MW) Wind Power Plants (633MW)

Mulilo De Aar IPPID 064 Dassieklip IPPID 123

Slimsun Swartland IPPID 164 Dorper IPPID 159

Prieska IPPID 65 West Coast 1 IPPID 309

Dreunberg IPPID 527 Nobelsfontein IPPID 128

Linde IPPID 523 Jeffreys Bay IPPID 182

Kalkbult IPPID 159 Grassridge IPPID 364

Reisa Kathu IPPID 444 Metro Wind van Stadens IPPID 138

Solar Capital De Aar IPPID 564 Chaba IPPID327

Solar Capital De Aar IPPID 168 Waainek IPPID362

Letsatsi IPPID 031

Lesedi IPPID 032

Herbert IPPID 696

Greefspan IPPID 443

Jasper Solar IPPID 562

Rusmo1 IPPID 155

Droogfontein IPPID 572

Solar De Aar IPPID 182

Aries Solar IPPID 163

Konkoosies Solar IPPID 128

Vredendal Solar IPPID 375

Upington Solar IPPID 764

Figure 6 shows the average daily energy production of selected wind and solar PV

power plants during winter and summer months, July 2016 and December 2016. The

data represented on the plot is for power plants listed in Table 5. The power plants are

14

comprised of nine wind farms with total installed capacity of 633MW and twenty one

solar PV plants with total installed capacity of 807MW. From the plot it can be seen that

in July (winter month), PV plants produce less energy than in December (summer

month) due to low sunlight intensity and shorter sun-hours. In summer there is more

sunshine hours in a day and intensity is higher compared to winter. Another

observation from Figure 6 is that average wind energy profile in July 2016 was relatively

constant throughout the day. In contrast to wind energy profile of July 2016, the energy

profile for December 2016 has a peak during early evening hours.

Figure 6: Seasonal variation of wind and solar PV energy production in 2016.

Figure 7 and Figure 8 show the hourly energy profiles of the sample of RE power plants

(listed in Table 5), for July 2016 and December 2016, respectively. The selected solar

PV and wind power plants produced almost the same amount of combined energy for

July (~319GWh) and December (~323GWh). In both plots, it is evident that wind power

contributed during night hours, when solar energy was not available i.e. horizontal

overlap of the green plot.

15

Figure 7: Energy production profile of Wind and Solar PV in July 2016.

Figure 8: Energy production profile of Wind and Solar PV in December 2016.

16

3.2 Monthly Energy Production

Figure 9 shows the cumulative monthly energy production of RE IPP power plants for

the period September 2013 to December 2016. The data represents monthly total

energy of power plants that submitted data to NERSA (i.e. 52 power plants at the time

of finalising this report). In 2016, about 6 445GWh of energy was generated by REIPPP

power plants. The energy produced in 2016 is nearly fifty percent (50%) more than the

RE IPP energy produced in 2015, which was about 4 400GWh. This demonstrates

success of REIPPP programme in the past three years. Figure 10 shows the share of

RE technology in the total energy produced in 2016. Wind technology produced nearly

54% of the renewable energy, followed by solar PV with 36%. Figure 11 shows the

cumulative RE IPP energy production since 2013. The cumulative energy produced till

31 December 2016 is roughly 13 090GWh.

Figure 9: Cumulative RE IPP monthly energy production over the past four years. Data sourced from RE IPPs.

17

Figure10: Renewable energy IPP technology contribution in 2016. Data sourced from RE IPPs.

Figure 11: Cumulative RE IPP monthly energy production over the past four years. Data sourced from RE

IPPs.

Table 5 lists the total energy production of various RE technologies from 2013 till June

2016. The energy represents only RE IPPs in full commercial operation i.e. some power

plants could not report energy production data during their early operation period. In

2016, solar PV and wind power plants produced approximately, 2 347GWh and

18

3 477GWh, respectively. Furthermore, the average monthly energy contribution of RE

IPP power plants for 2016 was more than 500GWh. Compared to 2015, the total annual

energy has increased by nearly 47%. This is attributed to new RE power plant additions

to the power grid.

Table 5: Recorded annual energy production figures for various RE technologies. The table represents energy production data submitted by IPPs.

Technology 2013 2014 2015 2016

GWh GWh GWh GWh

Solar PV 64 1 183 2 185 2 347

Wind 3 1 006 1 985 3 477

CSP 188 590

Hydro 34 31

Total Energy 67 2 189 4 392 6 445

Table 6 shows the comparison of expected energy production with actual energy

produced by wind and solar PV power plants of Bid windows 1 and 2. It is evident from

the table that the RE IPP power plants are performing as expected.

Table 6: Comparison of expected energy with actual energy production of RE IPPs.

Solar PV 2016

Expected Energy - P50 (GWh) Actual Energy (GWh)

BW1 1 370 1 378

BW2 818 840

Wind 2016

Expected Energy - P50 (GWh) Actual Energy (GWh)

BW1 1 907 1 889

BW2 944 1 011

3.3 Load factors of Renewable Energy Power Plants

The Load Factors (LFs) achieved by solar and PV power plants are shown in Figure 7

for various provinces. Renewable Energy Data and Information Service (REDIS)3 of the

DoE was used as a source for the LFs.

3 Department of Energy (DoE) - Renewable Energy Data and Information Service (REDIS), Available online:

http://redis.energy.gov.za/, Last accessed 20 February 2017.

19

During 2016, the average LFs of solar PV power plants in the Northern Cape and

Western Cape were approximately 26% and 23%, respectively. The average wind

energy LFs in 2016 varied from nearly 34% in the Western Cape to approximately 36%

in the Eastern Cape. In general, 2016 LFs are slightly higher than those achieved in

2015. The average load factors of CSP and small-hydro power plant are not presented

in this report due to few operating power plants for these technologies.

Figure 7: Annual Load Factors of solar PV and Wind power plants in different provinces. Data sourced from Department of Energy (DoE) - Renewable Energy Data and Information Service (REDIS).

4. CONCLUDING REMARKS

A total of 54 RE IPP power plants are in commercial operation. As of 31 January 2017,

the total installed capacity on the grid was 3 181MW. Out of this installed capacity,

nearly 2 906MW is in commercial operation. The submitted energy production data

from IPPs for 2016 indicates that the RE power plants produced nearly 6 445GWh. The

average load factor of wind technology is above 33% for East Cape and Western Cape

provinces. The average load factors for solar PV ranged from 23%, in provinces with

low solar radiation, to 26% in the Northern Cape, where there is plenty of solar energy

resource.

20

ANNEXURE A: GEOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF IPP RENEWABLE ENERGY

PROJECTS

Source: http://energy.org.za

Figure A1: Western Cape RE IPPs. Courtesy of Stephen Forder.

21

Source: http://energy.org.za

Figure A2: RE IPP plants in the Eastern Cape. Courtesy of Stephen Forder.

22

Source: http://energy.org.za

Figure A3: RE IPP plants in John Taolo and ZF Mgcawu District Municipalities in Northern Cape.

23

ANNEXURE B: NEW RENEWABLE ENERGY POWER PLANT ADDITIONS

Table B1: New RE IPP power plants

POWER PLANT PHOTOS

TOM BURKE SOLAR PV PARK (64MW)

Located in Lephalale municipal area, 5km

south of the Botswana border, Limpopo.

Source: http://www.observer.co.za/limpopos-third-solar-plant-

in-operation-soon/, Last accessed on 06 February 2017.

NOJOLI WIND FARM (86.6 MW)

Located near Cookhouse in the Eastern

Cape.

Source: Engineering News website:

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/enels-first-south-

african-wind-farm-connected-to-the-grid-2016-10-03. Last

accessed on 08 February 2017.

24

Table B1: New RE IPP power plants (continued)

PALEISHEUWEL PV PARK (75MW)

Located near Citrusdal in Western Cape

Source: Mybroadband website:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/163701-see-south-

africas-new-giant-solar-power-plant-photos.html, Last accessed

on 6 February 2017.

Robin Deep Landfill Power Project (3MW)

Located in Johannesburg in Gauteng.

Source: https://www.infrastructurene.ws/wp

content/uploads/sites/4/2016/12/ENERGY-Systems-has-switched-

on-power-generation-at-Robinson-Deep-landfill-site-in-

Johannesburg-c.jpg