South Africa's Renewable Energy Pipeline Doubles in One Year
South Africa has doubled renewable energy capacity under development in one year. This is significant, but the transmission grid will require investment and expansion to enable it. Meanwhile, through wheeling, the country can optimize the use of existing infrastructure and support the accelerated integration of renewable energy into the grid.
Contracted Grid Capacity, 2023 - 2024 / South African Renewable Energy Grid Survey
The 2024 South African Renewable Energy Grid Survey (SAREGS) reveals that industry has opened the throttle for renewable energy development in South Africa and demonstrates that new renewable energy project development pipeline has doubled in one year. However, near-term grid capacity is limited.
The survey, jointly published by Eskom, SAPVIA and SAWEA, gathers near-term renewable energy projections to inform medium-to-long term (+-10 year) grid expansion planning as well as the transmission infrastructure development plan for the National Transmission Company of SA.
New capacity refers to projects connected to the national power system derived from new generation facilities or the expansion of existing ones.
Industry is responding to the current lack of grid capacity in the high renewable energy regions (solar in the Northern Cape and wind energy in the Eastern and Western Cape). There is no capacity left for additional power to be connected to the grid in the western half of South Africa. Medium- to long-term developers are still pursuing high renewable energy areas, for when additional transmission grid infrastructure is built. Short-term projects are shifting to areas that have available grid capacity now.
Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal have the most grid availability, with 6 000MW available each. The North West, northern Free State and Limpopo are the major focus areas for solar, and Mpumalanga and northern KwaZulu-Natal mainly for wind.
At Etana Energy, we enable customers to access clean energy through the grid. Our process is simple, flexible and hassle-free, with no upfront investment from the customers and only an additional meter installed
