The PARI JET Portal is an innovation by the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) to enable municipalities and energy stakeholders to make quick, informed and easily implementable decisions regarding renewable energy generation at local level. The PARI JET Portal provides a simple interface to assist local municipalities as well as renewable energy developers and funders to understand the benefits and value of procuring electricity from inside the meter within their distribution license areas.

The PARI JET Portal supports the goals of the Just Energy Transition (JET) initiative at the municipal level. Installation of solar systems (PV) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) within municipal distribution areas will result in improved municipal energy security, energy cost savings, reduced need to increase the size of Eskom supply infrastructure as demand grows, new municipal development approvals without the need for Eskom upgrades, increased green contribution to municipal consumers.

The PARI JET Portal provides an estimate of the average electricity demand (load) for each municipality. This value can be adjusted to reflect the actual average load. The portal also provides an average solar global horizontal irradiance value (GHI) for each local municipality. The GHI data is used to estimate the annual output of a standardized configuration of solar PV and battery energy storage (BESS) – an energy building block – referred to as an EnerBlock©.

An EnerBlock© comprises a 4MWdc PV and 2MW/4MWh BESS energy building block. It requires only 2ha of land area, is easy and quick to install, represents a near-optimal ratio of PV to storage for savings maximization, and is small enough to be installed in small towns but large enough to provide an entry level of economy of scale. Larger installations constitute multiple EnerBlocks and the ratio of PV to BESS enables ~60% of a typical municipal load profile to be met without producing any surplus energy.