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Published on October 17th, 2009 | by Zachary Shahan

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7 African Countries to Get Utility-Scale Solar?

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October 17th, 2009 by Zachary Shahan 

California-based eSolar has just announced that it is expanding into southern Africa now. It has partnered with Johannesburg-based Clean Energy Solutions (CES) to create “eSolarSA” which will sell its concentrating solar power technology throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Sub-Saharan region eSolar is entering contains seven countries, including South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. The international solar company is already on three continents and has proven itself commercially and CEO Bill Gross states: “eSolar is ready to expand its global footprint and further its goal of making solar energy competitive with fossil fuels…. Africa boasts one of the highest solar resources on the planet, and eSolar’s modular, scalable technology is well-positioned to establish the continent as a leader in the development of low-cost, no-carbon energy solutions.”

South Africa seems primed for solar power. It has set the goal of having 10,000 GWh of electricity come from renewable energy resources by 2013.

As we all know, the natural solar resources in southern Africa are tremendous. Perhaps this move by eSolar will bring the technology needed to make this region a major solar node in the world. Stuart Fredman, who will lead eSolarSA’s efforts, believes in this. As he says: “Sub-Saharan Africa’s tremendous solar resource has gone relatively untapped, but now, with eSolar’s technology, we can establish Southern Africa as a new hotspot for solar development.”

Pasadena-based eSolar is a leader in the US with the only “commercially operating solar power tower plant in North America” — the recently developed Sierra SunTower power plant in Southern California — and a major partnership with NRG Energy, Inc. to create nearly 500 MW of solar electricity. It also recently expanded into India by partnering with ACME Group to develop 1,000 MW of solar power plants within the next 10 years.

We will see how this new movement into southern Africa affects solar energy usage and the solar energy market there and worldwide.

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About the Author

spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.


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  • Frustrated…

    UNITS, UNITS, UNITS!!!!

    From the story above:
    “South Africa seems primed for solar power. It has set the goal of having 10,000 GW of electricity come from renewable energy resources by 2013″

    Quite certain that South Africa does NOT plan to install 10TW (terrawatts) of solar generation capacity (i.e. – 10x the entire US or Chinese generation capacity), but instead wants to generate 10,000 GW HOURS (GWh). The amount of confusion that journalists cause to layman because they either don’t understand the difference between capacity and generation units, or – more likely – because they just get lazy and don’t probably explain and/or label them, is quite serious.

    To calculate how many installed GW of solar generation capacity that would take, do the following:

    (10,000GWh / annum)/(8,760 hours / annum) / (capacity factor of X%)

    A reasonable capacity factor for PV in South Africa would be something like 15-20%, which would give a required installed solar PV capacity of around 5.7-7.6GW. Other renewable technologies will have different capacity factors.

    So CleanTechnica, PLEASE start using proper units so that many of your readers don’t get confused. And that does NOT mean just saying how many homes’ electricity requirement that equals, unless you clarify how much electricity homes in country/region X use, and whether you have calculated the actual output of the plant, not just the installed, name-plate capacity

    • Frustrated

      Correction…just noticed two typos:
      ‘layman’ should be ‘laymen’ (or laypersons), and ‘probably’ should be ‘properly’.

      • Anonymous

        Typos happen — thanks for catching ours

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