Biggest solar and wind power plants coming to South Africa — with a big change

South Africa will add a combined 1,580 megawatts (MW) of peak renewable energy production through just the top 10 largest solar and wind plants going online in the near future.

The government’s independent power producers (IPP) programme procures new generation from private companies that can now generate electricity at a fraction of the cost of Eskom.

The Renewable Energy IPP (REIPP) programme is focused specifically on procuring generation from cleaner sources — such as solar and wind.

The programme has been running for roughly a decade and has gone through several bid windows.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy maintains an online database of IPP projects that form part of the programme, providing the details and status of each project.

MyBroadband assessed this list in early December 2024 to see what major new projects were scheduled to be added to the grid.

We ranked the list by capacity and found that nine of the top 10 projects with the biggest capacity in the entire programme were part of the two latest completed bid windows and were not yet online.

The four largest capacity facilities were photovoltaic (PV) solar plants.

The largest of the facilities was the Virginia Solar Park in the Free State, with a nameplate capacity of 275MW, 240MW of which will be for Eskom.

The plant is being constructed by Red Rocket, which has completed four major renewable facilities in the country – including the Roggeveld wind farm and Kathu solar plant.

The Virginia Solar Park will have the second-highest production output of any solar plant in South Africa.

The only solar farm that has greater capacity is the Kenhardt hybrid solar and battery facility in the Northern Cape, which boasts a peak capacity of 540MW.

The second largest plant in the pipeline is another Red Rocket project — the Good Hope Solar Park in the Free State — with a planned capacity of 200MW.

The Boitumelo and Kutlwano solar plants in the North West are tied for the third-biggest facilities, with each set to provide 150MW of capacity.

The remaining six plants in the top ten consist of five onshore wind farms and one solar farm, all of which have planned capacities of 140MW.

The table below shows the ten solar and wind power plants with the largest capacities.

Move away from the Cape

A noteworthy departure from previous projects was that five out of the ten plants are being constructed outside of the Cape provinces.

The combined 580MW of capacity to be provided by the three plants in the Free State — all of which were chosen under Bid Window 6 — represent over double the 279MW output of all the other plants commissioned in the province under the previous five bids.

The two North West plants in the top 10 and a third solar plant that is planned to have another 120MW capacity will contribute 420MW of capacity, compared with the province’s existing 275MW of IPP capacity.

The vast majority of wind and solar projects added over the first few REIPPP bids have been concentrated in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Western Cape.

The Eastern Cape and Western Cape have the greatest wind resources, while the Northern Cape has the most hours of annual sunshine.

Together, these provinces accounted for a combined 5,715MW of the 6,356MW of IPP generation online as of October 2024, working out to roughly 90% of the total.

However, Eskom has run out of transmission grid capacity to add more plants in these provinces.

Krutham managing director Peter Attard Montalto has previously criticised IPPs for failing to see the opportunity to roll out plants in other provinces.

“There is, in reality, too much moaning from too many developers who want to somehow wait for optimal conditions and access from new transmission capacity (perhaps five years away) in the Northern Cape,” Montlato said.

According to Eskom’s Generation Connection Capacity Assessment, the existing transmission grid had space for another 19,940MW of generation.

Research by the DMRE and Soly showed that outside of the Northern Cape, the Free State and North West have the most annual sun hours.

The Free State has capacity for another 1,420MW of generation, while the North West has 1,660MW available.

These provinces are also located closer to South Africa’s economic hub and most populous province — Gauteng — which has the highest power demand in the country.

Neighbouring Limpopo and Mpumalanga also have significant solar production potential and another 6,680MW of open transmission capacity.