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South African project market seems to be booming. Low module prices combine with extremely good solar insolation seem render good PV investment analysis result. It's time to learn more about this market. Decent construction cost? Other energy alternatives expensive?

Unfortunately South Africa is one big coal mine and electricity is dirt cheap. These projects are heavily subsidized and there is no prospects for an unsubsidized market for the time being.

Ok, thanks. PV will probably be cheaper there than in many places, but with dirt cheap coal it will be difficult for renewables. What about the politics, would it be possible to favor clean over dirty energy? My guess is that SA is not in the position of having that luxury yet..?

Would the middle east model to increase fossil fuel profits through increased exports enabled by replacement of domestic supply with electricity from desert sun be possible?

Quoted from "explo"

Ok, thanks. PV will probably be cheaper there than in many places, but with dirt cheap coal it will be difficult for renewables. What about the politics, would it be possible to favor clean over dirty energy? My guess is that SA is not in the position of having that luxury yet..?

Good guess, the local power utility Eskom is in a state of perpetual bankruptcy

Quoted from "explo"

Would the middle east model to increase fossil fuel profits through increased exports enabled by replacement of domestic supply with electricity from desert sun be possible?

Nope, thermal coal sells for $90/ton in the international markets, and at .333 kg/kWh fuel consumption you get fuel costs of 3 cents/kwh. Add one cent for opex. Kills anyhing that's slightly green.

Look elsewhere, e.g. Chile with similar irradiation than South Africa but much higher energy costs or Japan with virtually no fossil ressources and better irradiation than Germany...

Quoted from "odyd12"

The dirt cheap electricity is apparently not the case.
https://solarpvinvestor.com/tech-news/427…in-solar-policy
it talks about 16% increases yearly and it is called not affordable. I do not have much detail on it, perhaps worth of greater exploration There is a talk about 1.5GW of installs by 2015, I would say this can be done sooner.

Oh my goodness, finally I'm getting challenged. It was getting boring !!!

page 10: http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/Global/…EskomFactor.pdf

industry tariff: R 0.362/kWh = 4.2 uscent/kWh
residential tariff: R 0.664/kWh = 7.6 uscent/kWh

Let's see what you come up with

If countrys were able to think long-term, then they would see that it is more efficient use of natural resources to not waste the endless power of the Sun's photon showers or the winds and waves it creates or the ocean water it lifts and drops on mountain tops, instead of burning up limited resources maybe needed for a rainy day when high density portable fuel or just some export revenues from now globally scarse resources would be good. Nobody thinks like this though. The law of human exploitation of natural resources: "found a resource (that took million of years to form)? I'll bring the champange and a drill". That's fine, but with 7 billions endless crave for power to satisfy now, the planet resource depletion rate can't be ignored (100 years or even 1000 is nothing in a long-term evolution perspective). Saving for the long-term (future generations) seems to be an impossible concept today though (technology will keep "saving" us, hmm we never hit the planetary resource supply roof so far, but soon will, how fast is tech dev?). I think the view here will change at some point, but the question is at what point.

South Africa is a good example of a place where the question of political will to provide for the next generation is posed. Of course, such sentiments need to achieve a spread to get a global impact.

@odyd: my comments were meant looking to the future. Imho solar in south africa does not have the fundamentals PV needs to thrive in the short term. You do have one of the highest irradiations on earth - however this coincides with the largest coal resources on the continent and consequently with dirt cheap electricity prices. Eskom has been operating at the brink of bankruptcy for many years, and for many years they have announced massive price hikes without being able to follow through with them.

The thing about PV is that someone needs to pay the bill. Just because a country goes ahead with several hundred MWs or even more than a GW does not mean (imho) that a sustainable market is emerging. If heavy subsidies are involved you'd better be able to spread the burden on a large consumer base (like India) or on a very rich consumer base (Germany, Japan). If purchasing power is limited you will be surprised at how fast the PV-Door closes, e.g. after 2 GWs in Czech, after 4 GWs in Spain, and after only a few hundred MWs in Bulgaria. PV in South Africa will put a heavy strain on consumers. After all we are talking about a per capita GDP of 8000 USD compared to 50000 USD in Canada.