South Africa’s 7th renewables procurement round highly oversubscribed

The South African Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy has unveiled the list of bidders for the seventh round of the country's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program (REIPPPP).

This round features eight wind project proposals with a combined capacity of 1,692 MW, alongside 40 solar PV project proposals totaling 7.826 MW. The solar projects range from 91 MW to 240 MW and are slated for development in the provinces of Free State, Limpopo, North West, Mpumalanga, and Northern Cape.

Through this procurement process, the government aims to allocate 3.2 GW of onshore wind and 1.8 GW of solar capacity. Notably, solar proposals saw high demand, while wind projects fell short of the desired threshold.

This auction is the first under the South African government's December 2022 plan to procure 14,771 MW of new power generation capacity, which includes 3.94 GW of solar, 9.6 GW of wind, and 1.23 GW of storage.

In the sixth round of the REIPPPP, authorities selected five solar plants with a total capacity of 860 MW, with the average price settling at ZAR 0.49048 ($0.027) per kWh—an 8% increase from the fifth round's ZAR 0.45423 per kWh. Originally, the government had aimed to allocate up to 1 GW of solar capacity in this round.

The fifth REIPPPP auction, launched in March 2021, awarded 2.6 GW of renewable energy capacity across 25 projects, with sizes ranging from 75 MW to 140 MW.

Both the sixth and fifth rounds were part of a broader strategy to tender nearly 12 GW of capacity.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), South Africa’s installed PV capacity stood at an estimated 5,826 MW by the end of 2022.