South Africa seeks bids for 7.6 GW of new power generation
South Africa has launched three bidding rounds for 7615 MW of new power generation from renewable energy, natural gas and battery storage.
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South Africa, Cape Town: South Africa has launched three bidding rounds for 7615 MW of new power generation from renewable energy, natural gas and battery storage.
This is in as effort to overcome record power outages crippling economic output. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy said in that it had issued three requests for proposals (RFPs) for independent power producers to generate 5 GW of renewable energy, 2 GW from gas and 615 MW from battery storage. The country started procuring power from private developers more than a decade ago to supplement struggling state utility Eskom’s coal-fired power station fleet.
Before Thursday, 6 renewable energy bidding rounds dominated by wind and solar projects, one battery storage round, as well as an emergency “risk-mitigation” round had been launched. The emergency round got bogged down in environmental opposition and court challenges, with the bulk of the projects still seeking funds to build as of last month. To date, 90 renewable energy projects have completed construction and are operational, adding 6180 MW of capacity to the grid, while nine projects representing more than 1 GW are currently under construction.
Source: Reuters
#Department of Mineral Resources and Energy#energy crisis#ESKOM#power generation#South Africa