- NERSA registered 124 generation facilities with a combined capacity of 804MW between April and June.
- Two wind projects accounted for 568MW, while 122 solar projects contributed 236MW.
South Africa’s National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) registered 124 new generation facilities with a combined capacity of 804MW between April and June.
The projects represent R20.18 billion in investment. Notably, two wind facilities accounted for 568MW, while 122 solar photovoltaic facilities contributed the remaining 236MW.
Sixty-one projects will connect to the Eskom network. Together, they account for 757MW of capacity and about R19.5 billion in investment.
The remaining 63 facilities will connect to municipal distribution networks. These projects represent 47MW of capacity and R639 million in investment.
Northern Cape Leads Investment
The Northern Cape attracted R11.934 billion in investment during the quarter. Meanwhile, Mpumalanga and Gauteng followed in terms of capacity and investment.
Western Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo recorded the highest number of registered facilities. Across all projects, developers invested an average of R25,099 for every kilowatt of generation capacity.
NERSA processed the applications at an average of 10 working days. This compares with 11 working days for the 111 applications the regulator handled during the same quarter of the previous year.
Private Generation Continues To Expand
South Africa replaced licensing requirements with a registration system for qualifying private generation projects in 2018. Since then, NERSA has registered 2,619 facilities with a combined capacity of 20,131MW.
The registered projects represent about R409 billion in investment. Consequently, private generation continues to play a growing role in South Africa’s electricity market.
Eskom’s April winter outlook projected a 6GW peak-capacity surplus and no load shedding through the end of August. At the same time, the utility reported an energy availability factor of 65.35%, compared with 54.55% in 2023.
Renewable Project Delivery Remains A Concern
Eskom also highlighted a potential supply challenge beyond the immediate outlook. The utility said developers had built only about half of the renewable projects that secured grid allocation and offtake agreements since the Integrated Resource Plan 2019.
According to Eskom, this delivery gap could create supply adequacy risks between 2029 and 2030.
The latest NERSA figures show strong activity across both utility-scale wind and smaller solar projects. However, the figures also highlight the need to deliver registered projects and strengthen networks that can accommodate new generation.