Dom Wills from Sola Africa Discusses the Future of Solar Energy with Charlotte Kemp

This is Charlotte Kemp, Futures Alchemist, on Future Focused Business here on Hashtag Radio.

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Charlotte Kemp in the studio with Future Focused Business, and our guest today—we have two guests: Dom Wills from Solar Future will be speaking to us first, and then. After 1 o'clock, we'll be talking to Paul and Nicole from Open Workspaces. Future Focus Business is our opportunity to have philosophical and practical discussions behind the technologies and value shifts that affect our lives as we move towards our future. And what more important thing do we need in our future than basic resources, energy, and water? And obviously in Cape Town, we're having lots of water conversations at the moment. We're not going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about energy and solar power. So Dom, welcome to the show. You're from Solar Futures, and if anybody wants to follow that, it's on Twitter @SolarFuture, or the website is www.solarfuture.co.za. That's S-O-L-A-Future.co.za. I like that name because we're talking about the future. So, so Dom, welcome. I'm just going to ask you as we start, introduce yourself, explain what it is you do, where you come from, and And then we'll start to move into the business and what the business is all about.

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for having me on. My name is Dominic Woolse, as you said earlier, from a company called Solar Future Energy. And really what we're about is what we believe is the future of energy. And we're about making that happen in a distributed energy environment. In other words, essentially changing the model of energy in South Africa from being heavily reliant on centralized power stations situated in this case in Mpumalanga and certain areas, and rather making that into a decentralized model where energy can be produced anywhere really in the country. And we are enormously blessed in this country to have a solar resource that is much higher than almost every other country in the world. And we believe that for South Africa to have a prosperous future and in order to have the cheapest form of energy, We believe that that's going to come from solar photovoltaics. And that's really what we've been doing the last 10 years. And specifically the last 5 years, actually been focusing on the market, what we call the captive energy market, which is the market that is for everybody, essentially.

Yeah, very important. Let's just go back a step and just to understand what it is that you do and where you come from. So I see from LinkedIn that you are, you've got a PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, which obviously, you know, leads you into this field. What drew you to this field?

Yeah, I think when I finished studying, I really wanted to get into the renewable sector, and that was around the mid-2000s. And I kind of had a feeling that this whole renewables, the whole energy needed a shake-up, and there was, there was a drive for disruption, but there was no real market yet in South Africa, and everything was just a little bit too expensive, which is typical for how most technologies start out. They tend to be a bit expensive, and then over time as scale grows, they tend to become a bit cheaper. So what I did is I decided to enroll at Stellenbosch University, and I did a PhD in wind generator design actually. And I worked on quite an exciting project for essentially South African government where we we designed wind generators for very cold climate environments, particularly the South African Antarctic Base. And I went down there in 2007-2008 just to assess the conditions, but ultimately what was happening down there is that the South African Antarctic Base was using a lot of diesel, and they've got an enormous amount of wind down there. And so myself and a group of other researchers set about trying to design wind generators that could operate in such a cold environment and with such hectic storms as well.

Mm-hmm.

And that's really how the whole journey began. And then once we'd finished that project, that was around 2009, 2010, and then from there I started to explore the energy space and, and I joined a group of essentially friends from university guys that we'd been— I studied with and we'd done various adventures together. And between us, we decided we were going to put everything into solar and see where this could take us. And yeah, and here we are now, and it's a completely different picture to where it was 10 years ago or 8 years ago. Now when you speak about solar panels, people understand it. They understand that it's become a lot more affordable and so on, whereas 10 years ago it was really, it really sounded like almost like science fiction.

Yeah, a fringe activity.

Yeah.

All right, I just want to make a comment that this is the second week in a row that we have someone from Stellenbosch, and that wasn't by design. It's just obviously Stellenbosch is producing some, some great futuristic thinkers, so that's fantastic. All right, so, all right, maybe just expand that a little bit. You said we're in a different space from where we were, say, a decade ago. What is the evolution of Public perception as well as actual use of renewable energies like solar power in this case?

Yeah, so there's 2 things going on. There's the reality and the facts about what's actually happened in terms of the technology, and really what solar's been doing in the last 10 years, it has been moving forward on a tech level, but what it's really— where the real gains have been made is in the manufacturing and the scale. So the whole world, through various programs, has started to really adopt solar on a massive scale. So in total, around the world, there's around about 350 gigawatts of solar that is installed. And to give you an idea, South Africa in its peak, so in sort of winter around about 6 o'clock in the evening, we need about 34 gigawatts. Of power. So roughly 10 times that has been installed worldwide in terms of solar. And this scale has actually really, really bolstered the whole industry. So the scale at which guys are manufacturing now essentially means that the costs of manufacturing each panel has come down dramatically. In terms of— so, and that's been— sometimes are really quick. Sometimes in one year you'll see them drop sort of 40%, sometimes it'll be 10%, but overall they're a fraction of what they used to cost. And what that's done is that it's enabled solar energy to leapfrog other technologies. So a couple of years ago it became cheaper than nuclear, then it became cheaper than coal, and then more recently it's become cheaper than wind to make it the lowest cost energy you can get anywhere in the world. And that's quite an undisputed fact at the moment. And if you look at it in South Africa, to give you an example, the new coal that we're building now is costing in the region of R1.20 to R1.40 per kilowatt-hour. With the delays and so on and the increase in lending costs from Eskom, it seems like that even might be higher, whereas new solar is in the region of 40 to 60 cents. So it's actually less than half of the price of new coal. And nuclear is actually more expensive than coal. So if you look at public perception, I think public perception tends to lag behind what's sort of really going on. So public is probably starting to understand that solar's got a role to play, but there's still some quite valid questions, I think, in the public domain as well. about the fact that solar is only available when the sun is shining. At some point, you've actually got to store it and then be able to use it at any time of the day. So we don't typically use all of our energy only in the sunlight hours. You know, we tend to arrive at home and there's energy usage in the evenings, and we actually have 24-hour usage. So in order for the whole problem to be solved, there's going to be— you need more than just solar.

And that—

And that brings us to what the next wave is going to happen, which is storage.

Storage. Okay. So what solutions are available? Is your company looking at anything specific in that space?

Yeah, so it's probably a good time to mention the Robben Island microgrid, which we just finished about 6 months ago. And Robben Island is a completely isolated community. There's no cable, undersea cable or anything that connects them to Eskom. So they've always had to produce their own energy. Up until now, that's been done by just burning diesel. So it's sort of like a small example of what a whole country could look like. And they've got a community of about 100 people. They've got quite hectic energy usage as well because they desalinate all their water. There's no fresh water on the island. And on top of that—

That's a lot of diesel.

They've got quite a big community of people that live there with a lighthouse, and there's a harbour and so on.

And lots of tourists and visitors.

Yeah, and a couple of thousand tourists that come onto the island every day. So it's quite a good example there. So what we did there is we built a solar farm, and the peak energy from the solar farm is quite a lot more than what the usage of the island is. So what happens is There's basically a big excess of energy in the middle of the day when the sun is shining. And what that excess is being used for then is it's actually driven into the battery. There's a big lithium-ion battery there, which is stored in a container that's air-conditioned and kept in a very nicely regulated environment. And that battery essentially charges up during the day. And then when the sun actually goes down and people start to turn on things in the evening and so on, they're still obviously energy usage, and that battery then— the energy that's stored in the battery is then actually used to power all the other things on the island that require power when the sun is actually down.

I think it's actually very neat. I'm getting this picture of the battery that stores the power being cooled by an air conditioner that is powered by the power. It's a nice little closed loop.

It's a nice irony the way that the heat obviously of the sun is being used to Cool down, cool things down.

Very good. All right, so you've got the Robben Island model that works. How do we replicate that? How do— is this something that homes and businesses can use? How do we use or access batteries like that?

Yeah, so the first step is that there needs to be quite a lot more adoption of solar power around. So if we look at the projects that we've done just in Cape Town, Looking at places like Constantia Village, looking at Black River Park, we're looking at a few buildings in town. There's probably sort of 15 to 20 projects which are all quite large in size. So these are all businesses, these are all either retail centers or office parks. These are all basically places that use energy during the day. So homes and residences tend to use more energy in the evenings, Whereas we— what we did is we targeted places that were using energy when it was actually being produced. And that actually ended up being a very good model because if you use your energy during the day, it also means that your peak is in the middle of the day. And so what we were able to do is not only save people's energy usage and bring it down, but also reduce the peak load as well, which is also good for— it's good for their bill actually, because they get billed on that, but it's also good for the municipality as well, because you're bringing down the peaks, which is good for the network. The other thing that's good is that you're not actually disconnecting from the grid. So if you're in a place like Constantia Village, for example, you're not disconnected from the grid. All you're doing is drawing less energy from the grid. And as you build up your solar system more and more and more, you might find that at some point you are you're actually producing more energy than you are— that you actually need. And that you must either put back into the grid or you must use a battery to store it. And that's really where the energy conundrum is at the moment. It's all about what role is the grid going to be playing in terms of facilitating the sale of power around when everybody's got excess.

Yeah.

And to what extent are we going to be legally allowed to do that versus to what extent are we going to be having to almost cut ourselves off and store energy and batteries privately. But both those options are very feasible.

All right. You talked about public perception lagging, and, you know, in conversations I've had, the people that I— maybe just the people that I hang out with, but they're all into— not me personally— into healthy food and legumes and things like that, but also a lot of recycling and renewable energy. And those conversations I hear a lot of. And so it often surprises me when we discover people, groups of people that are not having these conversations. And I think in Cape Town, we do find this a lot more that people are actually exploring these issues specifically or particularly now because of the water issue. So something that we take for granted, we take energy for granted, we take water, we take various things for granted, and all of a sudden those assumptions are being challenged. They should be challenged because we should have a bit more respect and we should also consider making sure that we can keep using those resources into the future. But every now and then you encounter people who really don't understand. And this story doesn't come from South Africa. I don't want to name the country, but it's, you know, Northern Hemisphere, below Canada. And in one small town, they were considering installing solar power. And sure as nuts, they had a open forum city hall conversation, and somebody stood up and said, no, we can't use solar power, it wouldn't work because then we would use up all that— the sun that is coming to us, and then the plants won't have anything to grow with. And that was the science teacher in the local high school. So it does seem like, you know, for some people— and I don't want to mock too much, but, you know, when we're faced with new technologies, it takes people a while sometimes to work out how that works in practice, because we just had this assumption that, you know, water always comes from taps. So what do you mean, you know, what does a problem in a different part of the country have to do with us? Because there's water in the taps. And the energy comes, you know, there must be something that makes the energy. And we don't have a concept of how much the energy costs or what the externalities are of creating that energy. So we have to have these kind of conversations to explore that a little bit. So maybe you can just be like really grade 1 for us and like, the sun is shining, it's beaming down onto panels, how does that turn out into something that I can boil the kettle with to make a cup of coffee?

Hmm, okay, I think you can even take one step Before that, the sun as an energy source has been going about 4 billion years and it's got about another 5 billion, so we're sort of halfway. We're okay.

As Future Focus goes, we're not worried that far out.

Exactly. So essentially the first thing to know is that every energy source on the planet is all solar energy. Okay, so everything, every bit of energy that we've got on the planet comes from the sun. There's no other energy source. And if you look at even something like coal, I mean, coal, what is that? It's basically forests that, well, that grew because of photosynthesis.

Yes.

That's where the energy— and energy is then stored in the wood, and then that essentially goes underground, and over years and years and years it becomes coal. And what we're doing now is we're just basically digging it out and burning it. It's really solar energy. It's just a very dirty way of doing it and a very concentrated way of doing doing it, because in one year's worth of coal, what gets made in a natural way, we burn in a minute. So it's an enormously accelerated way of developing energy. But actually, the good news is that there's no shortage of energy. The amount of solar energy that lands every day is way, way, way in abundance of what we'd ever need, even if the population tripled or quadrupled.

Thank you.

times by 4, we would always have enough energy. So essentially, and even wind energy is also a byproduct of the sun. It's caused by uneven heating on the Earth's surface, which causes airflow. So really, it's all actually coming from the sun. It's just taken us a long time to get to the point where we've been able to harness it in an energy, in a sort of a cheap way. And that's largely just— been because of the way the Industrial Revolution pushed certain technologies. And, you know, if you look at fossil fuels, they were just easy to dig out and burn. You know, it's the same with fuels as well. So coal and fuels, and they all belong in the same thing, you know, combustion engines and combustion processes were just developed really early on, and it was cheap to get this stuff out of the ground because it was right there.

Yeah.

Open-cost coal mines, you just go in there and you just take this stuff out. So now that those resources are getting depleted, people have to dig further down. They have to basically spend more money to get them. You look at the oil fields, they're harder to get to now. They're having to explore in really dangerous places, cold places, and it's just driving the costs up.

Mm-hmm.

And then at the same time, while that's sort of going up at a rapid rate, you've got new technologies that are essentially coming down at a rapid And obviously solar is one of them. And solar is a disruptive technology, no question. And we've seen quite a lot of disruptive techs. I mean, if you look at 20 years ago, a landline was an essential part of your everyday life. Even like a Nokia 3310 was an essential part of your life.

Mm-hmm.

And after 2007, when Apple brought in a smartphone with a touchscreen, all of a sudden Everyone, you know, a lot of people were skeptical and all that kind of thing, but within a few years everyone has one. Everyone has one in their pocket. You don't really have cell phones anymore with like real buttons, you know. And so it just shows how quickly these things can actually change. But what they do need is a kind of a nexus technology inflection point. And unfortunately with the world being the way it is, or fortunately, it's all driven by cost. As soon as you reach that cost point where it becomes economically viable or better, people go for that. And the reason why most people, to be honest, are choosing the kind of Greenroot is actually mostly because they're saving money, not because they're saving the planet. And that's just a fundamental economic truth with the way the world works.

Yeah, I suppose it is a motivation for these things. So the cost of solar is coming down. You've got models that work for businesses and for office blocks and retail centres. There are a lot of people who have solar power at home, and I think from what you were saying earlier, if they've got excess solar, either excess energy, either they're losing it or they've got to plug it back into the grid. At what stage does the average homeowner get to have batteries at home where we can store these things in a viable way?

Yeah.

And cost-effective, I guess.

Yeah, so that is just a matter of economics and time. The residential model is very reliant on batteries at the moment. The City of Cape Town is actually quite progressive that they'll actually let you put energy back onto the grid, but they'll only pay you about a third of what you pay them when you buy it back.

Okay.

So it works, and it's not because they're trying to be difficult. I mean, it's actually illegal. They can't buy energy at a more expensive rate than what they buy from Eskom at.

Ah.

And so that's the reason why they can only, at this stage, until the laws change, that's the only reason why they can do that. So what ends up being sort of a cheaper option then is to say, well, instead of putting the energy back into the grid and only getting that small amount of money I'd rather buy a battery and put it into there and then take it out later whenever I want to do that. So that's part of what the next revolution is kind of, is kind of doing, because the battery tech is on a very similar curve to what the solar tech has been doing for the last 5 to 8 years. Lithium-ion batteries are now used in everything. I can right now, I can see 4, and there's one in my pocket.

Yes.

And there are electric cars now that have lithium-ion batteries in them. There are— the power tool industry has been driving them, and so the scale has slowly been getting bigger and bigger. And the biggest driver right now for lithium-ion batteries is the electric car industry. And you've seen what Elon Musk has been doing, and he's trying to drive volume. In China, they've got also a few really big automotive companies that that are driving the electric car industry. So once again, we're talking about scale, we're talking about manufacturing just getting better and better and better. We're beyond the point where all the chemists are trying to work out the different technologies and so on. We're just at the point now where we need scale and we need manufacturing. It just needs— the costs just need to come down.

Yeah, okay. I'm speaking with Don Mills from Solar Future. And if you want to check their website out, it's solafuture.co.za. And you're welcome to send us any questions on Twitter. It's Charlotte K Speak if you want to send us a question on Twitter. And you can also see the event on Facebook under my Facebook page. We're going to have a short music break, and I'm going to come back and chat to Dom about kind of the bigger picture with energy in terms of Africa and How we need it and what we're doing with it there. Charlotte Kemp back with Future Focus Business, and our guest today is Dom Wills from Solar Future. That's solarfuture.co.za, and we're talking about solar power. I love the idea, the kind of realization that all the energy that we have is in one way or another being created by the sun in the first place, and it just comes in different forms. And you talked about digging up coal and using it. And we have obviously huge debates about the coal industry. And I've heard this kind of going backwards and forwards about various ways of mining the coal and whether it's good for the environment and good for the coal miners and their families and good for the local economies or not. So these arguments going backwards and forwards. And now we have this phrase that people throw around talking about clean coal. coal is clean and neat, and I wanted to know your opinion on, you know, how viable is coal? Should we still be looking at it, or, you know, do you really have a much better opportunity for us to look at energy?

Yeah, I think when it comes to coal, there's obviously— there's a— we spoke about it earlier, but there's a huge carbon concentration that's released when coal is burnt, and even clean coal and carbon recapture technologies, they do help that. They do actually help that quite a bit, but you're not solving the complete problem. The real problem that I see with coal is that it is actually just a finite resource, and sure, there's the concerns about the environmental case and so on, but the fact is that it's continuously becoming more and more expensive. Resource. So you can either just keep on trying to burn coal, but it's progressively just becoming an economic, you know, economically just a bad decision to continue with that. So really, the future of coal even is really to help a transition. They need to— we need to be using what resource we have left to transition over to something that is actually sustainable for generations to come. And that's the most important use of coal right now, is to— it's almost like to say, right, we know our time's up at some point in the next 40 years, so let's use that time to transition over, allow other technologies to come in. And it's been sort of proven by most academic models that the cheapest overall energy for South Africa is going to be a combination of solar, wind and natural gas, and then ultimately the natural gas picture will fall away and be replaced by batteries or some form of storage.

All right, I think it's exciting. I really look forward to that time when we're, you know, relying on the energy that we have in abundance rather than having to go and look for it in other sources. Yeah, all right, so let's just talk kind of broader in terms of Africa. As we move away from Cape Town in South Africa, which has a lot of infrastructure, into maybe areas that are not as developed in terms of infrastructure or that are more remote from access to traditional energy sources, how does solar power help those kind of organizations or groups of people and the businesses that are operating in those areas?

Okay, so the most industrialized countries in the world have one thing in common. They have a very stable and low-cost form of energy base. So you look at Germany, you look at the States, you look at China, you look at— I mean, most of all manufacturing is very energy intensive. So you need cheap energy and you need it to be stable. Those are the 2 most important things. Africa traditionally hasn't had that at all. We— the electrification of Africa is in the single-digit percentage numbers. It's not good. And the reason for that is because Africa is a big place. It's a really big place. So to build power lines that stretch all the way around Africa to reach all the communities were just too expensive. So they actually made the cost of energy go up a huge amount.

Yeah.

So in South Africa, it was better, but it's mostly because we have mining. Mining is actually the thing that's been driving our economy. And more recently, in the last 20, 30 years, we've had financial services and other things that have come in, but mining's actually been there and still remains to be a huge part of our economy. What needs to happen next is industry, actual manufacturing, and that needs to happen in South Africa and it needs to happen in other parts of Africa as well. The centralized model of energy, of electricity, is not going to work in Africa. It's not going to be cost-effective, and it'll be happening at the wrong time because all the fossil fuel energy has become quite expensive now. So Africa is completely ripe for a totally decentralized energy model. And the best analogy that I've seen in the last couple of years is a bit like the way Africa also never went for fixed-line telecoms as well. Everything went straight to cell phones. And cell phones took off in Africa a lot faster than anybody ever thought. And the reason was because everyone could have one. You just had to plug it in once a day and, and you were connected. And it made a huge difference to everybody's lives, not only from a social perspective, but also enabled businesses to start up because people could be in touch over long distances and no one had to build lines and lines and lines because it's expensive and it takes a long time.

And then of course there's the financial element. Because with the phones, then they could move past the traditional brick-and-mortar banks and do online financial transactions.

Absolutely. So it was a huge— it was a platform for enabling a lot of technology to come to them. And with the internet and everything, and emails and so on, and your cell phone, you can almost be completely sustainable just with one device. So the next thing is going to happen actually very similarly on energy. So microgrids, which are essentially solar and wind-powered mini little grids that are then— they've got batteries in there and often a backup diesel generator— that is an enormous enabler for communities that are not electrified. Because— and we've actually seen incredible examples of where this has had enormous benefits to people, and I'll go into those a little bit later. But essentially, the model then for Africa is to have a lot of decentralized nodes of energy supply, and they're not connected to each other at all. So there could be 100 kilometers between 2 big nodes, and they both produce a lot of energy, but they're not— they don't have to be connected because the energy that they need is landing in the form of solar, and it's cheap enough to generate, and it's a lot cheaper than diesel. And If you look around Africa, there are a lot of incredible businesses and communities that are somehow able to run even though their cost of electricity is 4 times what it really should be, and that's because they're just burning diesel. And there's outages, and there's times where you don't— you can't get stock, and diesel in a lot of places is very expensive. So what needs to happen in these communities is that infrastructure needs to be put in, a bit of money needs to be invested, But then you've got a 20 to 30 year lifetime of that energy network. Well, it's actually really the solar panels, and they're guaranteed for 25 years. So you can get more life out of them as well. But essentially one investment upfront, and then suddenly you have very affordable power for quite a considerable period of time. And that's the model that Africa is going to go to.

Yeah. No, it's very encouraging. I watched a video the other day just showing an example of a family, was in South America, where their home— mom, dad, and 2 children— is quite remote from anywhere else. They don't have any access to electricity, and they're using paraffin, which obviously has its own problems and potential dangers. And they installed this small little solar kit for them, which— What is it? They pay off, you know, in small amounts every month, and the company that's taken it to them has priced it at a rate that it's no more expensive than the paraffin that they would be buying. But it's got a tiny little battery, and they can power their lights at night, charge their cell phones, and now the woman is going to save up and buy next another little set and buy a fridge, and all of a sudden her opportunities and her outlook in life are expand it just because she has access to this small amount of energy that she can store and use overnight.

It's an amazing example of what a mini economy actually looks like, because when I was at— I was at a conference last year and I met a couple of the leaders of businesses like this in Africa, and there's about 3 or 4 that have become big in various countries. And what they— the amazing thing is they all tell me this similar story. where somebody starts off and they've got one panel and they've got one battery just to get the lights going and to charge a cell phone. And she said the next thing they've got a business that's thriving, and 8 months later they're coming back because they need another panel to charge, you know, so they can watch television at night because they've been able to afford to do that.

Yeah.

And then the next thing there's more appliances and so on that they fill their house with. So it goes to show what an enormous difference it makes to people's lives if you're trying to run a business and your cell phone is dead, or you're trying to run a business and you— like, in some cases, radio. I mean, like, even a simple radio is just super important for people just to stay connected, listen to the news, see what's actually going on. And then it saves an enormous amount of time, and so businesses become more efficient and people tend to make more money and so on.

Yeah, well, what I love about stories like this is, you know, very often when we think about Something as big as energy, it seems like this is a problem that is too big for the average person to deal with. It has to be dealt with at a national level, and we can't play a part in it. But, you know, those examples of those small investments in small areas just allow that local economy to blossom, and you have a couple of those and you change the face of that town into something that's a lot more positive. Absolutely.

And the other thing that's incredible is that, I mean, if you look at— I mean, let's just take the water crisis that we're going through now in Cape Town. 2 years ago, if you asked somebody how much water they used in a month, they wouldn't be able to tell you.

Yeah.

If you asked them how much water do you use if you have a 2-minute shower, they wouldn't be able to tell you. If you asked them how much water is in the cistern, they wouldn't be able to tell you. And now these numbers are all at our fingertips. And as a community in Cape Town, we will never be the same again because Because we understand water now. Everybody does. Everyone is looking at rainwater harvesting or borehole or well point, and they're looking at all the numbers. The same thing is the case in energy with an example like that, because people now understand what is a unit of energy, how far does it actually go, what does it cost.

Yeah.

What is it, what is the benefit if that's just a little bit lower? What can I do then? You know, is there, is like, what is the oil heater use in respect to a flat-screen TV? TV, you know, what is that difference? And that understanding is actually what's driving people, is a byproduct, and it's helping to drive people's real understanding of what our resources actually are.

Yeah, it's powerful because, you know, like you're saying, it's from the water to the electricity, but you stop and just reassess everything, you know, like, do I really need to drive this route today, or can I, you know, summarize all of my activities into one day and save some petrol? You know, can we carpool? My child just started university and she's traveling between Muizenberg and the city, and she picks up 2 friends on the way because that's just going to be a lot more efficient than 3 cars in the city, which is already going to be a problem.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, a crisis is a terrible thing, but it's a wake-up call for us to reassess not just that issue, but everything else. And to find better ways of doing it. It's not just ways to avoid the discomfort, but actually better ways to use the tools or the resources that we need in every day.

Yeah, and I think people are feeling better as a result as well. You know, it sort of makes a difference in your life. You, as you mentioned earlier, sometimes you feel quite powerless with these big issues that go on, but then you start doing those simple things in your life and you're starting to reduce your impact and your footprint. And you just feel better as a result. It's a happier place, happier city.

Yeah, I have to confess that today was not my shower day, so it's a good thing you're sitting on the other side of the table. All right, okay, so maybe briefly, Dom, as we're wrapping up, the future of energy in Africa, what does it look like to you? I mean, you already said—

Decentralized. Yeah, I already said decentralized. I think the biggest thing with Africa is that people— it's going to need a long-term view. It's going to need people to say, I believe in Africa. I want to put something in that's going to last 10, 20, 30 years. I really— that's what it is. This is the only thing that's holding people back, really, is energy and investment. So the biggest challenges now going forward are not to do with cost, not to do with technology, and even I think the vision is there. It's actually about encouraging people to invest in these technologies because that's the only way that Africa is really going to thrive.

Yeah, and for your own company, what is the future? What projects— I mean, not that you're going to reveal anything that's private, but what kind of projects are you looking forward to, and what kind of people or companies should be coming to you and asking for help?

Our company is focused on solving the whole problem, so we understand that solar is not a dispatchable source of energy. So we're trying to make everything work together. We also don't shy away from other technology. We understand they all need to work together. The future of our business is really going to be in continuing to promote and build as much solar as we possibly can. We're going to be able to be in a position where we put financial products together, so if people can't afford them, we can finance them for them. We're going to put a huge focus in on on storage and batteries because the two go together just so incredibly well. And then, and finally, you know, pulling all of those technologies together, and for people that want to completely go off the grid, we're going to look at integrating natural gas as well. And so all of those pictures together, we think, are right for every different type of energies in South Africa and Africa.

Very Very exciting. I think it's a really positive outlook on the problems we have today, so thank you very much. Dom, thank you for your time with us today.

Yeah, it was great to be here.

Good. And folks, again, if you want to find Dom Wills, you can find him on solafuture.co.za. That's solafuture.co.za. My website is charlottekemp.co.za, and you can find the work that I do there.

That was Charlotte Kemp, Future's Alchemist, originally recorded on #Radio. Find Charlotte at charlottekemp.co.za.