South Africa is poised to reap the benefits of harnessing its vast wind power resources as part of its energy mix, and government must demonstrate its commitment to the development of wind energy, as part of its renewable energy plans. This is the view of Mainstream Renewable Power South Africa director Davin Chown, who tells Engineering News that the country has significant wind resources, but that the delays in the commercial use of wind power, means that the benefits to South Africa are being lost.

"There are huge financial benefits to be gained for the country, and while there are challenges facing the local wind energy sector, similar challenges have been overcome in places, such as India and China, and if government is serious about renewable energy, we can tackle any challenges that arise," he says. Mainstream is one of the sponsors of the Wind Power Africa 2010 Conference, and Chown is hopeful that one of the outcomes of the gathering will be to give government a clear message that wind power can play a significant role in its renewable energy strategy, and that, industry players are ready to roll-out projects.

"Wind power is one of the mostly quickly deployable forms of renewable energy and if government wishes to meet its target of installing 10 000 GWh of renewable energy capacity by 2013, then it must remove the current blockages to the development of wind power projects," says Chown. These impediments include a concern as to whether government has sufficient funds to support the renewable energy feed-in tariffs (Refits) programme, and whether access to the national grid will be possible given the constraints cited by State-owned power utility Eskom.

Chown says the move to setting up the independent systems and market operator (ISMO) is a welcome signal that government is seeking to deal with the access issues, but delays in quotes for substations and subsequent build timelines by Eskom are prohibitive. "Once government signs the power purchase agreements, which is expected by the last quarter of this year, a number of developers will be able to move ahead with the roll-out of their projects. By the second quarter of 2011, I believe construction will have started on up to 1 000 MW worth of projects, with many more to follow thereafter," says Chown.

Mainstream Renewable Power South Africa is a joint venture between Mainstream Renewable Power of Ireland and Genesis Eco-energy of Cape Town, which have entered into an €850-mllion deal to build wind farms in the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape and the Northern Cape, with an initial project pipeline of some 500 MW by 2014. The joint venture's flagship project is near Jeffreys Bay, in the Eastern Cape, with planning permission granted to build the first 16-MW of the total 165 MW wind power plant.

The next phase of this project will be the completion of the environmental impact assessment for the remaining phases of the facility, scheduled for November. "We have a number of other projects in various stages of development, and by the end of this year we will be ready to move ahead with 750 MW of permittable projects. This represents only the first tranche of a greater plan to develop 3 500 MW to 4 000 MW worth of projects in South Africa over the next few years," says Chown.