Port Elizabeth entrepreneur Aretha Charles is on a mission to supply solar powered electricity, while helping businesses alleviate the high cost of electricity and load shedding challenges.
Charles, 35, who has a quantity surveying background started solar energy solutions company, Uhuru Development Projects (Uhuru) in 2012.
She spotted a gap while working for Sanedi Projects, which at the time was designing energy efficiency solutions in Alice, Fort Cox College and the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape.
While bouts of load shedding serve as a periodical reminder of South Africa’s electricity supply crisis, it presents an opportunity for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) like Uhuru.
“We do energy audits for municipalities who are our clients, then we create solutions to help them save energy. The next phase of our business entails helping them generate their own electricity as part of the small-scale IPP (Independent Power Producer) programme."
During his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that government would “soon be initiating the procurement of an additional 11,800 megawatts (MW) of power from renewable energy, natural gas, battery storage and coal in line with the Integrated Resource Plan 2019.”
He went on to make a startling admission that despite this there would still be an energy supply shortfall of between 4,000 and 6,000 megawatts over the next five years as estimated by Eskom, because old coal-fired power stations are reaching their end of life.
“As part of the measures to address this shortfall, we will in the coming weeks issue a request for proposals for 2,600 megawatts from wind and solar energy as part of Bid Window 5. This will be followed by another bid window in August 2021,” Ramaphosa said.
Charles said the small-scale IPP programme which was adjusted to not more than 10 MW per municipality to allow self-generation, presents a further opportunity for her business.
“When the announcement was first made last year, we started engaging more municipalities for the 10MW plan, which means the power-purchase agreement is with the municipality. Self-generation means municipalities will have to generate more power or buy more power from businesses like ours,” said Charles.
Ramaphosa added that easing the licensing requirements for “new embedded generation projects could unlock up to 5000 megawatts of additional capacity and help to ease the impact of load shedding.
Charles said Uhuru has added small and medium energy-intensive businesses such as engineering companies, small factories and guesthouses to its clientele, as it let go of households because the small-scale nature of household installations translate to high cost for the business.
“Since 2019 we started to have a component of the business that focuses on small businesses like factories and B&Bs that are struggling with electricity and were highly affected by the load shedding that was happening as well,” said Charles.
“We look at the client’s overall annual consumption, estimated or actual electricity spend. And then we give them a system and then they can pay it off over a period. That has worked for well and we helped a number of small businesses take their businesses off the grid.”
Charles said the company has gained traction in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Western Cape.
She added that the business has battled challenges during 2020 because of lockdowns. “Customers pay 50% upfront and we must import the components. The challenge is that during the lockdown the importing of some elements took longer and the load shedding was still there,” she said. This effectively delayed their service to clients.
In addition, the cost of components went up. “Now for clients that have not been operating at full capacity, that are also cutting down on staff but they still have huge electricity bill to take care of. It was just very difficult to find common ground with our clients in terms of the systems costs. But at least we started on a good note in 2021,” she said.
CAPTION: Aretha Charles. Picture supplied
CAPTION: Solar panels. Pictures by Nadeem Jafar and Nachai Sorasee
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