South Africans who can’t afford to go full solar to escape load shedding are turning to easier solutions like inverters and battery backups – but researchers say that these systems are basically undoing any ‘good’ that load shedding is trying to achieve.
As load shedding shows no signs of stopping, more South Africans are turning to power backups to keep outages at bay. This has seen a boom in alternatives like solar and generator use in the country.
The use of solar is being incentivised by the government, with the introduction of solar tax incentives for the 2023/24 financial year. A big point of contention with the incentive, however, is that it only applies to solar panels – not the batteries, inverters or installation costs that go with it.
The reason for this, according to the National Treasury, is that the incentive’s goal is to boost alternative generation and take pressure off the national grid. Inverters and batteries do not do this, even though they may be vital to an effective solar setup.
New research from the Departments of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University shows that the situation may be worse than simply not being net generators of power.
An inverter and battery setup without solar is actually undoing the work of load shedding altogether, and may pose a greater risk to the grid, they said. BusinessTech
