Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI:South Africans have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun, according to a New York Times report.
Solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses — auto factories and wineries, gold mines and shopping malls. They are changing everyday life, trade and industry in Africa’s biggest economy.
Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 per cent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity.
Broken system
No longer do South Africans depend entirely on giant coal-burning plants that have defined how people worldwide got their electricity for more than a century. Joel Nana, a project manager with Sustainable Energy Africa, a Cape Townbased organization, called it “a bottom-up movement” to sidestep a generations-old problem. “The broken system is unreliable electricity, expensive electricity or no electricity at all,” he said. “We’ve been living in this situation forever.”
What’s happening in South Africa is repeating across the continent. In Africa around 600 million people lack reliable electricity. Across the continent, solar imports from China rose 50 per cent in the first 10 months of 2025, according to a review of Chinese export data by Ember, a British energy tracking group.
South Africa was the largest destination for Chinese solar, but not the only one. Sierra Leone imported the equivalent of more than half its total current electricity-generating capacity, and Chad, nearly half. In the past five years alone, South Africans installed solar panels representing more than seven gigawatts, or about a tenth of the total installed capacity of 55 gigawatts.
Rock-bottom prices Chinese state-owned companies are among several international firms to bid on South Africa’s $25 billion grid expansion.
“China has driven the prices of solar panels so low it’s really rock bottom at the moment,” said Charl Gous, a company president.
Rock-bottom prices have enabled Dr. Booley, the dentist in Cape Town, to expand, too. The panel and battery system at his office was paid off in less than four years.
