South Africa's Eskom adds a dash of solar to its coal power

South African power company Eskom is fast-tracking the development of two small solar-energy plants in advance of an international climate change conference set to take place in the country later this year.

ABB is building the photovoltaic (PV) plants next to Eskom’s coal-fired power stations in Lethabo in the Free State province and in Kendal in the Mpumalanga province. The facilities will be the first of their kind to be built in South Africa.

Both plants are scheduled to be completed by November of this year. Later that month, the South African city of Durban is set to host the Conference of Parties (COP) 17 international gathering on climate change.

Designed to produce electricity for use by the coal-fired power plants, the solar facilities will be capable of remote operation and monitoring. The Kendal station will feature a fixed-tilt solar PV power plant with a capacity of 620 kilowatts (kW), while the Lethabo location will feature a single-axis tracking solar PV power plant with a peaking capacity of 575 kW.