IR: So, we've made compelling arguments for solar PV, and I guess one of the questions to ask would be, what are the risks? What could derail this seemingly unstoppable growth of solar PV in South Africa?
DWT: I don't want to sound too positive, but there's not that many risks to solar PV at the moment. I think the cost trajectories negate the risk of affordability.
Costs are decreasing at a rate that make it accessible to a large portion of end users. One risk is around utility scale grid access and getting enough solar PV generation online as quickly as we need it.
One aspect is more to do with renewable energy generation technology in general, and that's around system stability and ensuring that you've got a system that works all year round in all weather conditions, and that you've got a system that is fit for purpose for the type of loads that we have in South Africa.
From a residential and a commercial industrial perspective, one of the risks is some of the regulatory uncertainty and the current situation that we find ourselves in, where we don't have an adequate standards framework to cover residential and commercial and industrial installations.
We don't have adequate standards that speak to the equipment specifications. And we currently do not have a national installation standard that adequately covers all the aspects of a solar PV system.
Furthermore, the regulatory uncertainty around municipal sign off requirements, where there are differing requirements between different municipalities all over the country.
Unfortunately, that uncertainty is a risk to the continued sustainable rollout of residential and commercial industrial solar PV.
And I think the last one to mention is the current education and current vocational training framework or vocational training situation in South Africa is that we don't adequately prepare individuals and we don't have enough skilled individuals to participate in that deployment process to actually go out and build the solar PV projects.
BG: We think the biggest risk is the grid that is constrained, especially in areas where there's high renewable energy resources, so mainly the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape. It's estimated that we need about, as a country, R390bn to expand the national grid, so about 14,000 kilometres of transmission lines and transformer upgrades in order to connect more power plants to the grid. As such, government is exploring public-private partnerships, and I think that will facilitate this expansion quite nicely.