Solar PV facilities made up 99 of the registrations, with total capacity of 499 MW and an investment cost of R9.9-billion
Photo by: Creamer Media
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) reports that it registered a further 105 generation facilities during the period from January to March 2024, raising to 1 415 the number of facilities registered since the system was introduced in 2018.
In a statement, Nersa said the newly registered facilities had a combined capacity of 788 MW and a total investment value of R18.4-billion, increasing the overall capacity of registered projects to 7 158 MW and the total investment value to R131-billion.
Registrations, which have been facilitated by a liberalisation of the regulatory restrictions governing private generation, surged in 2022 and 2023, and spiked at over 2 400 MW registered in the first quarter of 2023 as loadshedding intensified. The latest quarterly registrations are more or less in line with the capacity registered in the last quarter of the 2023 calendar year.
The average investment cost for the latest batch of registered projects is R23 374/kW, Nersa said.
The 105 registrations include solar PV, a solar PV generator combined with battery energy storage, a wind turbine, cogeneration and gas, with solar PV comprising 99 of the facilities, which have a total capacity of 499 MW and an investment cost of R9.9-billion.
Nersa’s Nhlanhla Gumede reiterated his concern about the high number of registered facilities not coupled with storage.
The highest number of newly registered generation facilities are in Gauteng (24), Western Cape (22) and Free State (13), with the top three provinces by capacity being the Western Cape (213 MW), Northern Cape (152 MW) and North West (142 MW).
Seventy-seven generation facilities, with a combined capacity of 664 MW, are connected to the Eskom network, while 28 generation facilities are connected to the municipal distribution network and have a capacity of 124 MW.