Socio-economic benefits of meteorological service in the South African energy (power generation) sector.

Abstract

As a public good, meteorological services are funded by the state in most countries and are available freely to the public. In some cases, there is a need for tailoring information to suit users’ needs. These specialised services are then available at a fee. Some sectors such as the energy sector are heavily dependent on weather and climate information to plan production. Accuracy and timeliness of this information may increase the productivity of electricity producers. The aim of this study was to assess the benefits of weather and climate services in the energy sector, focusing on electricity generation in South Africa. With the recent scrutiny on how public funds are utilised there has been a growing need to prove to the government the benefits that accrue to society if meteorological services, especially its infrastructure, technology and research, are properly funded. The study assessed three main objectives: firstly, it assessed the usefulness of information generated by the meteorological services; secondly, it assessed the value placed by electricity generators on services provided by the meteorological services; and lastly, it assessed the need to update technology and infrastructure to ensure that weather and climate information meets user needs. Due to the dispersed geographic location of the targeted respondents, data was collected through the administration of structured questionnaire via email. The respondents are the 45 licensed electricity generators obtained from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa. The results of the study show that: first, the electricity generators found the services provided by the national meteorological service to be valuable. Second, the information provided by the meteorological services was found by the electricity generators to be useful for planning their operations. Last, the results showed that there is need for the meteorological services to update its technology and infrastructures. It is hoped that the results generated here will provide decision makers with concrete evidence for the need to invest in meteorological services infrastructure, technology and research and development. It is recommended that another study is conducted to assess socio-economic benefits of meteorological service in the other sectors such as aviation, transport and agriculture to mention a few.