Abstract for:An Expansion of the Long Term Impact of Renewable Wind Technology Implementation in South Africa

This study focuses on the desired capacity roll out of wind technology in South Africa and assesses the feasibility based on land availability, plant performance and potential energy yields (based on location specific meteorological data), as well as turbine performance power curves. The results indicate that plant placement is critical to plant performance and energy yields. The model shows that allocating most of the new build plant in the regions of the most favourable weather conditions for energy outputs needs careful consideration as there is a finite availability for suitable land in certain regions for wind plant implementation.  The model includes feedback dynamics which reallocate new build allocations to other regions, in the event a desired region has been used to capacity. This produces new energy yield projections which give a more realistic outlook on the technology implementation. Since the model now takes into account land availability constraints the energy yield projection is 15.13% lower considering the redistributed capacity allocation. Another scenario which was generated analysed the energy yield of the plant decommission and plant non-decommission scenarios. The results show the plant decommissioning scenario lowers energy yield by 31.34% which may translate to a 5.70% shortfall in the overall generation supply.