South Africa - Beachfront turbine will harvest wind

Soon there will be a new landmark on the Port Elizabeth beachfront. A single wind turbine – one of two being purchased by the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality – will be erected at Hobie Beach and will be used to light the electric screen at Shark Rock Pier.

The second turbine will be part of a project in a residential property that will also involve solar power. Infrastructure, engineering and energy project director Peter Nielsen told a committee yesterday that tenders had been called for and it was hoped to purchase the necessary equipment by the end of this month and have it installed in March.

The project will then be evaluated over a period of six months. At the residential property – the site of which has not yet been decided – wind and solar power would be used together to store power in a battery and the investigation would ascertain whether this form of power model was viable.

Nielsen said a situation could exist in terms of which the power not used by the individual householder could be sold to the municipality and through it to the national grid.

This is not the only renewable energy source being investigated by the municipality. Nielsen said pilot wells were being drilled at the Arlington waste site to discover the levels of methane gas, while at Koedoeskloof, the municipality would go straight ahead with the project of harvesting the methane gas.

Central Energy Fund sustainability will fund the cost of the project and an assessment of the two sites last year revealed that they could generate more than five megawatts of renewable energy, enough to supply electricity to 1500 homes.