This paper presents the design of flywheel rotor prototypes developed to enhance rural energisation in sub-Saharan Africa. The flywheel rotors are made from locally available fibre and epoxy resin. The profiles were designed using novel shape profiles based on Berger, Porat and Stodola’s...

The need to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of fossil fuel usage, the volatility of fuel prices and enhancement of national energy security, have largely driven a phenomenal growth, around the world, in renewable energy (RE) generation (particularly grid-connected), over the past two...

In recent years, more and more countries enact a variety of policy targets for future shares and amounts of renewable energy. This article explores existing policy directives on renewable literature and in so doing, it demonstrate policy gaps. In contribution to a plethora of existing literature...

The South African solar map has been redrawn to make it applicable to photovoltaic installations. This has been done with the aim of reducing the cost of solar PV installations in South Africa through accurate energy resource assessment and competent system design. Climate data software as well...

Energy efficiency is one of the most potent and cost effective ways of meeting the demands of sustainable development. It has in fact been referred to as the best energy resource. Way back in 2005 the South African Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) published its Energy Efficiency Strategy...

The challenges faced by the socio-political economy of South Africa when attempting to diversify away from a legacy of over a century of near exclusive dependence on cheap and abundant coal for its energy needs, particularly electricity, are discussed in this paper. Existing government policy...

South Africa has a highly centralized network, in which almost all electricity is produced in Mpumalanga and transmitted throughout South Africa. In the case of the Western Cape, electricity has to be transmitted over 800–1370 km. This generates losses and entails high transmission costs....

A vision for a United States of Africa has been advocated since the dawn of independence by, among others, pioneers like Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Julius Nyerere. More recently the idea gained new momentum, through such initiatives as the New Partnership for African Development...

Mozambique is host to the great Zambezi River Basin and the World Famous Cahora Bassa power plant that generates some 13,000GWh annually. The bulk of this energy (85%) is exported but the revenue raised does not appear to have any appreciable impact on the host economy. Moreover it is estimated...