Durban – The eThekwini Municipality hopes its solar photovoltaic project launched at uShaka Marine World on Wednesday will ease pressure on the electricity grid and reduce its carbon footprint.
The municipality's Energy Office acting manager Sibusiso Ntshalintshali said they would be monitoring the performance of the systems over the next 12 months.
“We hope the systems are quite good and get the generation capacity that we are anticipating. That would be fantastic for us to plan for a larger roll-out,” said Ntshalintshali.
The Energy Office Solar project has seen the three-phase project installing Solar Photovoltaic (PV) panels on five municipal buildings.
The embedded rooftop solar PV generation was installed at uShaka Marine Theme Park, Moses Mabhida stadium Sky Car, Moses Mabhida People’s Park restaurant, Metro Police headquarters and the eThekwini Water and Sanitation Customer Service buildings.
The project cost R10 million inclusive of operational and maintenance costs and will be monitored over a one-year period.
Councillor Ntandoyenkosi Khuzwayo said the city was excited by the project. “We are committed to clean renewable energy and are pleased with the work done by the Energy Office in making sure this was a success.”
UShaka Marine chief executive Stella Khumalo said they were glad the theme park had been earmarked in piloting the project.
“We regard this as a groundbreaking achievement that will place the park at the forefront of technology advancements intended to lessen the environmental impact of not only this facility, but the city as a whole,” said Khumalo.
The theme park boasts the largest installation of solar PV of a capacity of 165.4MWh a year.
The pilot installations are expected to save the city 426.75MWh – a saving of R337 396 in the first year.