By Tannur Anders
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African commercial property group Redefine is looking at boosting its solar power generation capacity as it seeks to reduce its reliance on struggling state-owned electricity utility Eskom, it said on Monday. Eskom is implementing the worst blackouts on record, often leaving households without electricity for up to 10 hours in a day and also impacting manufacturing and businesses. Redefine – which owns retail, office and industrial properties valued at 94.1 billion rand – currently uses solar power to meet 7% of its electricity demand. It also relies on diesel-powered generators. “If we can push it to 18%, I think we’ll do exceptionally well with our existing infrastructure available,” said Chief Operations Officer Leon Kok after the company reported a fall in half-year income, sending its shares down as much as 6%. The company currently has a solar generation capacity of 31.9 megawatts peak (MWp), with a further 12.9 MWp expansion underway worth 142.5 million rand ($7.8 million) to help cope with the energy crisis. Kok said the company planned to roll out solar panels onto its warehouse rooftops for distribution to office buildings once there is a workable and commercially-attractive way of transmitting or delivering the generated power.
But for Redefine to sufficiently reduce its reliance on Eskom, it would need to invest in capital intensive battery storage – which the company is studying, he added.
Redefine spends 35,400 rand per hour on diesel for 191 diesel generators across its South African portfolio. Earlier on Monday, the group said its distributable income per share – the primary measure of underlying financial performance in the listed property sector – fell 9.2% to 23.91 cents in the six months ended Feb. 28, from 26.33 cents a year earlier. Group revenue increased 36.4% to 4.8 billion rand.
($1 = 18.3485 rand)
(Reporting by Tannur Anders;Editing by Nqobile Dludla, Louise Heavens and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)