As South Africans continue to endure eight or more hours per day without electricity, more and more businesses and residential estates are turning to rooftop solar to meet their electricity requirements and mitigate the devastating effects of load shedding.
The more recently reported projects include Dunlop Belting Products, Africa's largest conveyor belt manufacturer that manufactures over 500 km of conveyor belting per annum.
The company will now power its production facility in Benoni, Gauteng, by means of an 802 kW solar PV system. Not only will the rooftop PV system mitigate production interruptions caused by continuous cycles of load shedding, but it will also eliminate more than 1200 tonnes of CO2 every year because of its commitment to renewable energy.
In other news, the shopping mall with largest solar rooftop PV plant in Africa is Cornubia Mall, Blackburn Estate, Mount Edgecombe, KZN. This solar-power plant has a DC capacity of 5,25 MW and uses 39 inverters. The shops in the mall are able to operate normally during periods of load shedding, saving jobs and creating an improved customer experience.
The demand for solar PV in commercial and industrial applications is expected to ramp exponentially as Eskom’s power-generating units continue to fail and load shedding Stages increase.
