CSP Today 1 July 2010.
North African nations such as Algeria and Morocco are ideally located for CSP. But they will need to offer a lot more than sunshine in order to satisfy investors…
http://social.csptoday.com/industry-insight/creating-fertile-ground-csp-desert
(CSP = Concentrating Solar Power, a field of mirrors reflecting sunlight onto a collector tower).
I think there is a lesson here for South Africa – our regulatory environment is like a military obstacle course, with conflicting and complex requirements and at the end of the course sits Eskom, who is the Systems Operator and Single Buyer of electricity and controls what power is bought from which Independent Power Producer (IPP).
We need a truly independent systems operator and buyer, clear power purchase agreements guaranteed by the government and a streamlined environmental impact assessment process – then the eager IPPs will come.
I think there is a lesson here for South Africa – our regulatory environment is like a military obstacle course, with conflicting and complex requirements and at the end of the course sits Eskom, who is the Systems Operator and Single Buyer of electricity and controls what power is bought from which Independent Power Producer (IPP).
We need a truly independent systems operator and buyer, clear power purchase agreements guaranteed by the government and a streamlined environmental impact assessment process – then the eager IPPs will come.