R20bn investment fuels South Africa's renewable energy growth with 124 new projects
South Africa's renewable energy landscape is evolving with the registration of 124 new generation facilities, worth R20.18 billion.
In the three months leading up to June, South Africa witnessed a surge in its renewable energy sector, with 124 new generation facilities registering a combined capacity of 804MW, according to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). The majority of these projects, 122, were solar photovoltaic installations, while the remaining two were wind facilities, contributing a total of 568MW to the new capacity.
Despite the solar projects being the most prevalent, they only accounted for 236MW of the total capacity. The NERSA processed the applications for these 124 facilities within an average of 10 working days, a slight improvement from the previous 11 days. The Northern Cape province led the way, attracting the largest investment of R11.93 billion for five projects totaling 440MW capacity.
This was closely followed by Mpumalanga with 182MW from seven projects and Gauteng with 132MW from 33 facilities. Out of the 124 facilities, 61 will be connected to Eskom's grid, providing 757MW of capacity and an investment of R19.54 billion. The remaining 61 facilities will also be connected to the Eskom network, contributing 757MW of capacity and around R19,541 million in investment.
The average investment cost per kilowatt in the first quarter of 2026/27 was approximately R25,099. Since the registration regime began in 2018, a total of 2,619 generation facilities have been registered, with a combined capacity of 20,131MW and an estimated investment cost of R409 billion.
Written by urgent.news from IOL's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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