Informal settlements could drive South Africa’s rooftop solar revolution
- David Everatt and Imraan Valodia
Informal settlements could drive South Africa’s solar revolution
Informal settlements could drive South Africa’s solar revolution because of enlightened self-interest. Solar would provide their dwellings with power, but also a source of revenue if power is sold back to the grid.
Much debate has been sparked by the announcement that in Cape Town at least, people and companies generating excess power will soon be able to sell it back to the grid, at an approved feed-in tariff.
That will immediately benefit some people in Cape Town — if thee is sufficient additional power to sell to the grid – but also those already resourced — industrial plants, factories, wealthier individuals and households who can afford large solar installations (and the connection fees back to the grid).
Of course, everyone will benefit if this additional power impacts on rolling blackouts, but only those high-income households that can afford to install solar systems will get the financial benefit of the feed-in tariff.
Why not simultaneously trigger a “solar revolution” by targeting informal settlements? They are without doubt among some of the poorest spaces in the country. They have not been provided with electricity, and no disputes over illegal connections should occur.
The morphology of informal settlements, as we note below, is to move from free-standing structures to compounds, which can include multiple households in one larger group of structures — which share one very large roof, ideal for solar.
If informal settlement residents are helped upfront — say, through a lease-and-own agreement for the installation and infrastructure — simple self-interest would see households in informal settlements lead the way in harvesting sunshine and selling to the grid. As their solar farms grow, and income increases, they may also be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder, and off social grants. It seems such a clearly virtuous cycle that it must form a core part of the conversation.
The Gauteng Research Triangle (GRT) is a partnership between the Universities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and the Witwatersrand (Wits). The GRT oversees a range of areas, but one of its main projects is a new health and demographic surveillance site (HDSS) with a split node located in Hillbrow, Atteridgeville West, and Melusi, an informal settlement in Pretoria.
The node is part of the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (Saprin) hosted by the SA Medical Research Council and funded by the Department of Science and Innovation.
It joins other well-known nodes including Agincourt, Dimamo and Ahri, with further nodes in the early stages in Cape Town, eThekwini and the Eastern Cape.
The Gauteng node is called “GRT-Inspired” (the Gauteng Research Triangle Initiative for the Study of Population, Infrastructure and Regional Economic Development).
The core functions of an HDSS are measuring the population (which should be ~100,000 people) that inhabit dwelling units within the boundaries of the node, which align with Stats SA boundaries.
Through one face-to-face interview per annum, and two shorter