These private power plants help fight load-shedding in South Africa

There are multiple renewable energy power plants in operation across South Africa which support Eskom in providing electricity to the national grid.

These stations form part of government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPP), aimed at decreasing the country’s reliance on fuel-based generation over the next decade.

Government has opened up bidding for more than 11,800MW of power to be procured from IPPs, including renewable energy, natural gas, battery storage and coal.

While much of this capacity is due to only come online in the next few years, Eskom’s online data portal shows that it has already installed renewable generation capacity of around 5,350MW, the majority of which is provided by IPPs.

Wind energy generation capacity accounts for more than half of this — 2,612.7MW — with only 100MW being from Eskom’s own Sere Wind Farm project.

Private photovoltaic (PV) solar power plants provide a further 2,211.1MW of capacity, while concentrated solar power (CSP) plants contributed the remaining 500MW.

Although this capacity might appear significant when looking at South Africa’s typical demand of around 30,000MW during the winter period, it should be emphasised that these plants are not always capable of performing at full capacity.

South Africa’s peak periods are typically in the early evenings or mornings, when there is not enough sun around for PV solar to sufficiently support the grid.

This means that South Africa still has to rely heavily on coal and gas stations to rapidly spin up generation at these critical times.

Nevertheless, recent updates from Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshasha have highlighted how wind and CSP solar — which has the benefit of power storage for later use — either helped the utility to avoid load-shedding or lower the required load-shedding stages during evening peak hours.

The table below shows how much power was provided by renewable energy generation over the course of a week in May and June at evening peak times.

The Department of Energy’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) Projects website shows that there are currently 77 renewable energy projects in operation in the country.

While most of these are solar PV plants,  the top 11 plants by capacity are onshore wind farms in the Northern, Eastern and Western Cape.

The largest wind farm by capacity is Longyuan Mulilo Green Energy De Aar 2 North Wind Energy Facility in the Northern Cape, with a maximum output of 138.96MW.

Next up is the Nxuba Wind Farm in the Eastern Cape with 138.9MW capacity, followed by the Loeriesfontein 2 Wind Farm in the Northern Cape, with 138.2MW capacity.

The remaining large wind farms on the list ranged in output from 107.76MWMW to 137MW.

Below are photos of the top three largest private wind farms in the country.

Longyuan Mulilo Green Energy De Aar 2 North Wind Energy Facility

Nxuba Wind Farm

Loeriesfontein Wind Farm 2

The other major contributors to the current renewable energy generation during load-shedding are CSP plants – four of which have 100MW capacity each.

These four are all located in the Northern Cape, and can provide a minimum of three hours of power storage for when the sun is not shining.

Near Pofadder are the Xina Solar One and Kaxu Solar One plants, while the Ilanga CSP 1 and Kathu Solar Parks are located near Upington and Kathu, respectively.

Below are photos of these CSP plants.

 Kathu Solar Power Plant

Ilanga CSP 1

Xina Solar One

The full list

The largest individual solar PV plant projects feeding power into the grid provide 75MW of capacity each.

Eskom’s latest renewable generation data showed solar plants typically produce more than 1,500MW at their peak during the winter.

While they have excellent output throughout the day, their contribution to the total energy mix drops off when the sun sets, as they have no battery storage.

The remaining renewable energy types on the IPP database were two small hydro plants and one landfill gas plant.

The table below lists the private power plants which were in commercial operation as of Sunday 6 June 2021, according to the Department of Energy’s IPP Projects Database.