Zimbabwe leads with solar toll gates
While South African taxpayers are crying foul over government’s failure to explore all funding options available to its e-tolling scheme on the roads of Gauteng, Zimbabwe raced ahead to lead the world with the first installation of solar-powered tollgates last year, photovoltaic products manufacturer SolarWorld Africa MD Gregor Küpper says.
The solar power initiative falls within the country’s plan to upgrade its road transport services as part of an overall infrastructure improvement plan.
Küpper notes: “A SolarWorld Africa distributor was granted a contract in 2013 to install 750 kWp of solar power at the 22 new tollgates in this electricity-strapped country, which has one of the highest road densities in Africa.”
Each rooftop installation, at each tollgate, is powered by 34 kWp systems, inverter technology, one 3 200 Ampere-hour battery bank and a 50 kVA backup generator.
“Each remotely located site took seven days to install. They are monitored with monitoring technology through the Global System for Mobile communications network and are recorded as the first solar-powered tollgates in the world,” explains Küpper.
Zimbabwe takes it domestic electricity generation from coal, hydropower and thermal power plants, which supply about 1.2 GW of electricity to the country, which requires 2.2 GW. Additional power is imported from Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.
Over the past decade, Zimbabwe has experienced drastic load-shedding, which on some days has meant outages of up to ten hours.
“We believe that the use of solar power systems could help alleviate the instability that has affected people’s quality of life, business and industrial development. An efficient and viable power sector will assist economic stability and growth, given its linkages with the rest of the economy and within the Southern African Development Community – which will have a direct bearing on the national income.”
Comments
The
functionality
you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.
If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.
If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.
For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.
Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):
Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):
All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors
including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.
Already a subscriber?
Forgotten your password?
Receive weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine (print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
➕
Recieve daily email newsletters
➕
Access to full search results
➕
Access archive of magazine back copies
➕
Access to Projects in Progress
➕
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA
R4500 (equivalent of R375 a month)
SUBSCRIBEAll benefits from Option 1
➕
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports on various industrial and mining sectors, in PDF format, including on:
Electricity
➕
Water
➕
Energy Transition
➕
Hydrogen
➕
Roads, Rail and Ports
➕
Coal
➕
Gold
➕
Platinum
➕
Battery Metals
➕
etc.
Receive all benefits from Option 1 or Option 2 delivered to numerous people at your company
➕
Multiple User names and Passwords for simultaneous log-ins
➕
Intranet integration access to all in your organisation