While the majority of people look for one solution to South Africa’s energy crisis—which generally excludes the involvement of Eskom—Peter Venn, CEO of Seriti Green, is a firm advocate for using a mix of energy sources to power our world and drive our economy… including Eskom
With loadshedding impacting all South Africans, it’s little wonder that most people have a strong opinion on Eskom as well as what the country could be doing to stabilise and grow our electricity capacity. However, we could and should operate in different realities because, for a start, the layperson tends to think about one energy source being the key to addressing our lack of lights at night for our homes and power for our businesses during the day. However, aside from not being practical, such an approach would be entirely unproductive.
“The reality of the modern energy industry is that every grid is a mix of inputs,” says Peter Venn, the CEO of Seriti Green, a highly qualified global business professional with around two decades of energy experience packed into his CV.
“The demand for energy varies enormously, not just during the day and in evening peak periods, but over holiday times when people might travel from inland to the coast. There is also a massive boost in manufacturing in the months leading up to the Christmas period, so any grid needs to be a dynamic entity that has a wide range of inputs,” adds Venn, who spent 12 years as the Managing Director of Windlab Africa. Venn has experienced the massive growth of wind energy and has been a key role-player in the Sub-Saharan context.
Understanding the needs of communities and industrial areas, and then collaborating with different role-players to ensure there is an optimal mix of energy supplied, is of vital importance to secure not just the lowest cost for consumers, but that the capacity of any installation is used optimally.
“Excess energy created by renewable sources can easily be stored or fed into the grid, but if that energy has to be stored for too long before it is used, or if it has to travel hundreds of kilometers around the grid to where it is needed, then the loss of energy can mitigate the value of creating it,” adds Venn.
It is for that reason that his team is staffed with a wide and wise mix of older industry professionals as well as incredibly bright young tech and engineering professionals. Although Venn is entrepreneurial at heart, the reality of his industry is that projects can take years to be rubber-stamped and financed, after which construction can take three to five years to complete, if not longer, especially as wind farms are usually built in outlying areas—and never less than one kilometre from residential dwellings.
“We’re hiring more and more people in the sector and in Bethal, Mpumalanga, we are building the grid infrastructure for 900 Megawatts of output as part of the Ummbila Emoyeni Wind Energy Facility. We’re building the first 25 turbines to produce 155 Megawatts over the course of the next 18 months, and then we will start construction on the other phases of the project, but by the end of next year our goal is to have all 900 Megawatts under construction,” says Venn
The result will be the creation of Africa’s largest wind farm or renewable energy facility at 750 Megawatts of wind power and 150 solar Megawatts, including a degree of battery storage.
“It’s complex,” smiles Venn, which explains his team of bright young things who need to calculate—often many years in advance—the capacity, usage and need for mixed production of energy for the area that a project needs to supply, taking into account holidays, up and down times during the day, and the cost of the various types of energy that will be feeding into the grid.
Two additional development projects in Seriti’s Africa portfolio are the Miombo Hewani 300MW wind farm in Tanzania and the Meru County 120MW Energy Park in Kenya, but as CEO, Venn’s ultimate responsibility is to deliver on Seriti Green’s strategic goal of becoming a leading black-owned IPP in Southern Africa that helps to unlock Africa’s renewable energy potential.
Windlab offered Venn the space to embark on a highly successful project outroll for their South African and East African teams to develop significant renewable energy projects across the African continent, and that knowledge and experience is invaluable in driving the growth of wind energy in South Africa, along with the fact that there are so many communities that haven’t seen this energy infrastructure before.
“There are also many divisions and areas of even Eskom’s operations that haven’t seen this before, so we’re playing a massive educational role,” adds Venn.
Seriti Green is also a key player in the National Government’s Just Energy Transition (JET) plan, which aims to transition towards a cleaner and greener energy future. The long-term aim is to achieve “Net Zero ” carbon emissions by 2050, but at the same time generating an increase in sustainable jobs while either transforming or retrofitting power stations in order to enable them to be able to deliver other forms of energy, rather than creating totally new infrastructure. Reducing carbon emissions and limiting job losses are all part of the JET plan.
At the same time the country’s grid connection infrastructure needs to evolve in order to accommodate the shift to renewable energy, along with the overall modernisation of the electricity distribution system, but Venn is excited about the role that Seriti can play, while at the same time remaining realistic about the need to balance the different sources of energy.
“We have a wonderful path over the next seven to 10 years to create the narrative of energy needing to be supplied as a mixture of renewables and coal, and not just renewables OR coal!” stresses Venn. “It’s one word that previous regimes created that really skewed the narrative and created the idea of competition or for the different sectors to fight with one another to find a winner, but that’s not the case.
“If you look at the modelling from the UCT Energy Center, energy generation needs to double over the next 20 years, and that’s just to keep the lights on! And just to encourage economic growth. We’ve got to grow from 200 Terawatt hours to around 300 Terawatt hours. That’s the minimum. So, it’s not about us replacing any coal when you need that much growth.”
Seriti Resources, which is Seriti Green’s majority shareholder, is also a player in the coal industry and is a substantial supplier of coal to Eskom, because they recognise the need for renewables and non-renewables to work together in raising our capacity—at least for the next few decades until renewables have had time to spread across the nation, along with the introduction of new technologies, which in itself is proving to be a major game-changer.
“There is new stuff on the grid, new tech on the grid, and we have to not only ensure that we future proof the grid, but also work towards making sure that the energy comes in at the right cost,” adds Venn, who highlights the fact that it is currently possible to generate wind power at R1,60 (R/kWh) and battery power at R1,70 (R/kWh).
“That’s cheaper than the energy that could come out of a new coal plant, and wind by itself and solar by itself is less than R1, and at the same time batteries keep getting cheaper, which is going to have an enormous impact on how electricity is created, and consumers are able to store and access it.
“That means we really have the opportunity to lead… and Eskom in South Africa is by far the gorilla on the grid, but that puts a lot of responsibility on Eskom to really set the tone for all our fellow compatriots across Sub Saharan Africa to get this right as we go forward.”
A major challenge facing the industry is the need to create more solar plants out in the east of the country, although in our favour is the fact that the country runs from east to west. As a result, according to Venn, building more solar plants in the east would allow those plants to provide electricity for South Africans for an extra one to two hours a day, compared to the Northern Cape that does its best creation of electricity during the middle of the day.
“We need more solar electricity creation in the east, so it’s good that projects are being planned and rolled out in that region,” says Venn. “But perhaps an even bigger problem is how to break down the monopoly of supply that Eskom currently holds, which you don’t find in countries where supply is properly regulated, organised and distributed. In London you can buy electricity from seven different providers, but in South Africa we can never deregulate the grid because it’s a proper monopoly.
“Eskom should be figuring out ways in which it can work with the industry and not against it, because adapting the grid to accommodate renewables from all around South Africa requires functioning hubs to be running smoothly to make sure that there’s ease of connection into those. That’s going to take a long time, a lot of private funding, and it’s complicated, which is why Eskom needs to open up certain channels such as payments.”
Seriti Green is playing their part through construction of South Africa’s largest wind farm in Mpumalanga (due to come online in 2025) to generate 155 MW of power. This Wind Energy Facility is the first phase of a larger ±900MW renewable energy cluster called Ummbila Emoyeni that is located between Bethal and Morgenzon in Mpumalanga, which is a combination of 750 MW of wind energy facilities and 150 MW solar PV plants. The entire project has been designated as a Strategic Integrated Project by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure.
While wind energy is largely accepted to be the cleanest form of energy, it has drawn criticism for the impact it has on wildlife, but Seriti maintains stringent protocols in terms of the environmental impact of their work.
“Absolutely, it’s the biggest part of what we do. We will cancel projects based on a negative environmental factor, but there is also a lot of misinformation out there in terms of birdlife and wind turbines. The biggest killer of birds is actually buildings in big cities, and we take great pains to avoid any loss of life, and for instance when migratory birds arrive the turbines are actually shut off,” adds Venn.
Seriti also builds much taller turbines, up to 222 meters high, which means that the bottom edge of the blade on the downswing will be a good 40 meters off the ground. Not only does that help to avoid many birds, it’s also a game-changer for bats, which are vital for our ecosystem, but which generally don’t fly that high. They will also turn off the turbines after heavy rains when the bat breeding season starts, and their extensive modelling takes numerous environmental factors into account. Seriti Green also rehabilitates the land after construction is completed.
“Spreading power through Africa is happening, but there are obviously nationalism and energy security factors, but Egypt has interconnectors for exporting electricity, as has Libya and Morocco. I have great hope for the future as I believe there’s one line that needs to be built, and then you could feasibly export electricity from Cape Town to Cairo,” says Venn.
“There are facilities like the Aswan Dam that offer incredible renewable energy, while Ethiopia and the Northern Cape could theoretically power the world with solar PV, although it’s technically not possible, but we must look at it more regionally across the continent. Namibia is going to be in such a good position when this trading platform and the grid gets connected as they have phenomenal solar resources and that could be a massive game-changer for their economy. The potential is phenomenal, it just takes lots of planning and a whole lot more patience.”
