The share of South Africa's non-hydro renewables power generation will increase from 8.1% in 2017 to 30.3% in 2030, following the Government's decision to restructure its energy output, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData's latest report, 'South Africa Power Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2018 - Market Trends, Regulations, and Competitive Landscape' which provides forecast numbers for the countries power capacity, generation, and consumption up to 2030,  reveals that most of its current electricity supply is generated from coal based capacity, accounting for 74.7% of the country's total installed capacity.

Chiradeep Chatterjee, Power Industry Analyst at GlobalData, comments, ''South Africa's new Integrated Resource Plan 2018 (IRP 2018), has called for increasing the share of renewables and gas-based thermal power capacity in order to move away from coal and nuclear, but this will not be easy to achieve.''

This will partly happen organically as Eskom, South Africa's state owned electricity generating company, has reported that 75% of the country's coal based power plants will near their life by 2040, with the government confirming plans to retire and replace these facilities with new gas-fired capacity. The Government has also scrapped an earlier proposal to increase installed nuclear capacity, and is now calling for increasing the capacity share of wind and solar power instead.

Chatterjee continued, ''Non-hydro renewables including biopower, are therefore expected to contribute approximately 30% of the country's installed capacity and around 20% of it's annual power generation by 2030."

GlobalData's report also observes that South Africa has been following an Integrated Resource Plan since 2011, now superseded by the new IRP 2018. One of the assumptions from the Resource Plan was that electricity consumption would continue to increase, yet consumption has declined over the years, mainly due to increases in electricity prices and slow economic growth.

Development of the non-hydro renewable power sector had stalled since 2015-2016, when corruption allegations rocked the previous South Africa administration. As the country does not have adequate gas reserves of its own, it is proposing to source from neighbouring Mozambique and other members of the  Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Chatterjee added, "South Africa cannot increase its hydropower capacity due to deficient rainfall and the occurrence of regular droughts. It also does not want to increase its nuclear generation capacity, so it will have to depend on non-hydro renewables such as solar power, wind and biopower to augment capacity in the future."

GlobalData | www.globaldata.com