The solar energy radiation and wind energy data for South Africa is quite extensive.
Several public institutions, such as the National Building Research Institute (NBRI) and
the Energy Research Center (ERC), Cape Town are handling this [15,16]. On an average,
about 24 GWhr/m2
per annum of solar radiation is received in the country. With a large
land mass of 1.2 million squire kilometers (a large proportion of it being desert) South
Africa is a potentially solar rich country. It is interesting to note that while South Africa
presently imports some solar energy technology (photovoltaic especially), there is a large
local production capacity and some of their products (solar thermal mainly) are being
exported.