March 20, 2024 - Johannesburg, South Africa: (L-R) Melusi Tshabalala, Founder and CEO of, Mesama Energy, Dr Andries van der Linde, Head of Renewable Energy at SSC Energy, Dexter King, Commercial Lead at Southern & East Africa HDF Energy and Nandu Bhula Country Manager at ACWA Power Energy Africa. The panel speak for an hour about their own challenges and hopes for the green hydroogen renewable market in South Africa on the last day of the Solar and Storage Africa 2024 conference. The three-day conference is the first the organizers have brought to the continent continent and proved to be a tour de force in showcasing the latest in solar and to a lesser extent, other renewable technology to a large and eager audience, one that was a mixture of private businesses and citizens as well as public companies and representatives from other African countries. With a quarter more registered attendees than the conference's October 2023 incarnation in the U.K., and twice the number of exhibitors, it highlighted private solar PV (photovoltaic) generation's growing importance that has began to fill the void left by the failing public utility company, Eskom in earnest in South Africa. In a country where the number of days without power have increased from just 7 in 2014 to 290 in 2023, the uptake of solar panels and equipment has soared. Private solar generation from businesses and households increased more in one year in 2023 than Eskom was able to add to the grid itself in the previous decade. This is even with Eskom's tailwind of western-backed soft loans made available through the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). As of December 2023, USD $12.5 billion is available to the public utility to help make the transition to renewables. And Eskom has to date hardly tapped into. Morgan Stanley, a global financial services provider, has even forecast that private solar generation will exceed that of the government's own provision by 2025. (George Philipas/Polaris)