Cape Town reports record number of rooftop solar applications

Applications for solar PV installations have registered another record on the back of persistent load-shedding, the City of Cape Town said on Monday.

The first four months of 2023 saw 2,333 new applications — about 21% of all applications since the city began promoting its small-scale embedded generation programme.

“February may have shattered records for solar PV installation applications, but March and April have already surpassed this,” the city said on Monday.

“These figures show an energised market response to Cape Town’s incentives for businesses and residents with solar PV generation capacity.”

The city is offering cash paybacks for excess rooftop solar power. Qualifying businesses and residents will benefit.

The city is pursuing a three-phase procurement plan to protect residents as much as possible from rolling blackouts, with the aim of shielding them from up to four stages of load-shedding within three years. The limited protection offered by the city’s Steenbras hydro pumped storage scheme will be augmented in future by 200MW of renewable energy via rooftop solar and a tender for 500MW of dispatchable energy.

In addition, the city is investing R1.2bn in a solar plant and battery project outside Somerset West. The facility will be capable of providing a full stage of load-shedding protection during the day.

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