At first glance there's nothing out of the ordinary about the regional airport in George, a town of just 150,000 residents on South Africa's south coast. In fact though, the small site is Africa's first "green" airport to be powered by the sun. The control tower, escalators, check-in desks, baggage carousels, restaurants and ATMs -- every service here depends on a small solar power station, located a few hundred metres away in a field of dandelions next to a runway.
Its 2,000 solar panels produce up to 750 kW every day, easily surpassing the 400 kW needed to run the airport.
The excess is fed back into the municipal power grid, and a computer screen in the terminal informs passengers: "Within this month (September), 274 households were supplied through this system with green electricity."
The solar plant, launched in September 2015, is the second solar-run airport in the world after Cochin airport in southern India. Since solar became the airport's main source of power, the hub has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 1,229 tonnes “- the equivalent of 103,934 litres of fuel. In a country with an estimated average of 8.5 hours of sunshine a day throughout the year, solar's untapped potential looks huge.
