Prof Craig McGregor delivered his inaugural lecture on Tuesday 19 May 2026. The title of his lecture was Sun, steel and storage: Solar thermal in South Africa’s energy future.

Prof McGregor holds the Acwa Chair in Concentrating Solar Power and is the leader of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group (STERG) in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at Stellenbosch University.

Prof McGregor’s lecture focused on the role of concentrating solar power, or CSP, in South Africa’s energy future. He argued that South Africa has one of the world’s best direct solar resources, yet has not fully used this advantage to build a large-scale solar thermal industry. The central argument was that South Africa needs to replace ageing coal-fired power stations over the next few decades, and that renewable energy must form a major part of that transition. While photovoltaic solar panels are very cheap during daylight hours, they do not solve the problem of supplying electricity at night or during peak demand. CSP, by contrast, can store heat in molten salt and use it later to generate electricity, making it a dispatchable renewable energy source.

South Africa already has seven CSP plants, including Acwa Power’s 50 MW Bokpoort parabolic trough power plant and the 100 MW Redstone central receiver tower power plant located in the Northen Cape, which uses molten salt storage and can deliver a 24/7 stable electricity supply.

Prof McGregor’s lecture can be viewed here on Stellenbosch University’s streaming YouTube channel.