Firms and households tap rooftop power as load-shedding risk lingers

Improving technologies, which reduce deployment costs, as well as lower tariffs and thousands of hours of sunshine every year, along with the continued challenges of State-owned power utility Eskom’s load-shedding, will likely drive more citizens and businesses to adopt solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to meet their electricity consumptions needs. Despite the prevalence of some barriers, including municipal capacity constraints, processes, policies and regulations and illicit operators, as well as the upfront costs needed to deploy solar-based power systems, that hamper the acceleration of the sectors’ growth, adoption of solar PV technology is on the rise.