Modernising South Africa’s power grid to manage bi-directional flows is essential for enabling renewable-powered economic growth, following the crippling effects of prolonged periods of load shedding.

Even though South Africa has experienced a protracted spell without load shedding as of August this year, electricity outages persist due to network overloading. This is largely because of load reduction efforts to protect transformers from excessive demand and electricity theft.

“The impact of loadshedding on South Africa's economy has been severe, particularly in key sectors like mining, which has experienced significant operational challenges due to unreliable power supply,” says Nishan Baijnath, Systems Architect, Power Systems at Schneider Electric.

“Beyond mining, other sectors such as manufacturing, transportation and construction have also been severely impacted. The lack of reliable energy has resulted in decreased production capacity, increased costs and lost economic opportunities. For example, in the food sector, the energy crisis has contributed to inflation, affecting both producers and consumers.”

He explains that the overall effect of loadshedding on the economy has been substantial, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth constricted to 0.6% for 2023. This impact extends beyond immediate economic indicators, affecting job creation, investment attraction and long-term economic development prospects for the country.

Renewables uptake

While the threat of the resumption of loadshedding looms and ongoing load reduction continues to hinder economic growth, many businesses and homeowners are turning to renewable energy solutions to decrease their reliance on an unstable electricity supply.

Baijnath points out that in 2023, the installed capacity of solar panels in commercial, industrial and residential sectors exceeded 3.2GW, with renewable energy sources accounting for 8.8% of the country’s electrical energy.

“This trend illustrates a significant shift towards private renewable energy solutions in response to ongoing energy challenges, highlighting the changing dynamics in South Africa's energy landscape,” he says.

“Because businesses, households and industries needed to get through multiple stages of rolling blackouts, they installed sufficient capacity to do so. However, this now means they are generating more electricity than they need and this additional capacity can essentially be sold or exported back into the grid.”

This has resulted in the energy flow becoming bi-directional, rather than just the one-way flow from the utility or municipality to the consumer, says Baijnath, adding that this shift has necessitated a robust framework for managing these resources effectively with a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS).

"Utility control centres are primarily designed for real-time operations. However, with Distributed Energy Resource (DER) management, we incorporate metadata to gain a predictive perspective,” he says.

Future projections

“This allows utilities to forecast production based on weather data for specific areas. As they look ahead, they can develop both future projections and real-time constraint management. This helps them understand the energy available for deployment now and what could be available later.”

Baijnath notes that the challenges lie in managing these resources while recognising the inherent flexibility in the system. Some customers can participate in demand response programmes, opting to reduce their load because they have alternative energy sources for their operations. Utilities must effectively address these challenges by measuring and managing DERs as a complete, integrated system.

“DERMS can introduce a completely new energy model that incorporates time-of-day usage, which is effective because you can predict both potential load and generation at specific times, enabling energy trading capabilities. DERMS essentially allows for orchestration across the grid, managing individual distributed energy resources as a single system,” he says.

Baijnath states that adopting digital solutions, primarily software platforms, is crucial for effectively managing electrical networks. These solutions provide access to vast amounts of data, which is essential for efficient network management.

“In power systems, everything revolves around mathematical calculations based on load and generation, which are constantly changing. Without the ability to process and analyse this data, it's impossible to manage the electrical network effectively or efficiently,” Baijnath concludes.