Johannesburg – South African solar company Rhino Energy Solutions has completed five solar photovoltaic installations across The Capital Hotels & Apartments portfolio, delivering 1.3 MWp of installed capacity as the hotel group expands its renewable energy programme.
The installations were completed safely, on schedule and within budget as part of a phased rollout that began with a pilot at Capital Empire in 2022.
The programme currently covers six hotels and is funded through a power purchase agreement (PPA), allowing the hotels to benefit from solar power without the upfront capital cost of installing the systems.
“We didn’t want a single flashy solar installation for the sake of a headline, we wanted a model that made sense across the portfolio,” said Jurie Bezuidenhout, managing director of The Capital Hotels & Apartments.
“The PPA structure let us do that without diverting capital from other priorities, and the result we saw at Capital Empire gave us the confidence to keep expanding on our solar initiative with Rhino,” he said.
The company said a further 387 kWp of carport solar is under construction at two sites, while a 2.5 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) pilot is being developed at three hotels – Capital Mbombela, Capital Seven Villa and Spa and Zimbali.
The batteries are being designed specifically for time-of-use tariff arbitrage, charging from solar generation during the day or cheaper off-peak grid electricity and discharging during peak tariff periods.
Rogan Davies, group CEO of Rhino Energy Solutions, said working at operational hotels presented additional challenges because construction had to take place without disrupting guests or daily operations.
“Working on a live hotel is a different discipline to a greenfield industrial rooftop,” Davies said. “Everything has to work around guests and operating hours, and the safety demands of working at height don’t get any lighter just because the client is hospitality rather than manufacturing.”
Davies said early assessment of the properties was important because not all hotels had suitable roofs or sufficient space for solar installations.
“Not every roof in the portfolio was going to qualify, and being upfront about that early saved everyone problems later,” he said.
The battery installations are still under construction, meaning the group does not yet have verified savings from the pilot.
“The battery pilot is the next test,” Bezuidenhout said. “If it delivers predictable savings against our peak tariff periods, it becomes part of how we think about every future hotel in the group.”
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
