South Africa's Integrated Energy Resource Plan: A marked shift towards wind power

 The Integrated Energy Resource Plan 2025 which envisages some R2.2 trillion of new investment into the energy sector, will see wind power increase from 8% of installed generation capacity to 24%, or 34 000MW by 2039, while coal will remain the chief source of power at 27% of South Africa's capacity.

This indication that the government wishes for substantially higher investment in the wind energy sector in the next few years was contained in the address by Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who spoke at the opening of the Windaba conference in Cape Town on Wednesday. Currently, 58% of South Africa's installed capacity is generated by coal, and coal accounts for 93% of electricity production. Solar makes up 10% of current installed capacity.

Ramokgopa said it was a waste of energy trying to advocate one source of power over another, as "we are all on the same team working towards the same goal; we are just different players." He stated that South Africa's energy transition programme was "irreversible," and the country aims to meet its carbon emission targets.

He said that there had already been over R100 billion invested in wind power generation in South Africa to date, with 40 projects in operation or construction, and 3 614MW of capacity online.

However, he mentioned that it takes up to nine years for wind power projects to become operational, and ways needed to be found, also from the government's regulatory and policy framework point of view, to allow these projects to get off the ground more quickly.

This point was pertinent given that Seriti Green CEO Peter Venn pointed out at the conference that currently no wind power projects are under construction in terms of the government's Renewable Energy Independent Producer Power Programme (REIPPP), and the last time wind energy was included in this programme was in Bid Window 3, which closed in 2013. There have been five bid windows since then.

Reiterating a theme at the conference of needing to deal with the limited capacity of the electricity grid, in Bid Window 6 in 2023, none of the wind projects were selected out of bids for an allocation of 3 200MW, due to grid-related constraints.

Ramokgopa said the IRP 2025, which was announced publicly on Sunday for the first time, provides a long-term guide and stability on energy policy and targets, but it is also flexible enough to include other or new technologies that may become more cost-effective over the period of the IRP 2025, such as hydrogen power sources.

He said that by 2030, the IRP 2025 envisages that gas will comprise 6 000MW of installed capacity, some 7 300MW will be wind capacity, while battery storage capacity would amount to 3 100MW. By 2039, it is envisaged that solar electricity power capacity would amount to 18% of the country's total capacity, gas 11%, while nuclear is estimated to contribute 7 060MW.

Riveshen Govender, CEO of the South African Wind Energy Association, stated that "we must break the shackles of the electricity grid constraints." He said there were over 5 300MW of wind projects in development, which is up nearly 60% since 2023, making it the second largest contributor to the renewable energy mix, signaling growing investor confidence in the sector.

He said that the National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTSA) is still in the process of transitioning to become an independent power transmission company, but the grid capacity expansion has since been elevated to a national priority by the government.

Subesh Pillay, acting director-general of the Department of Electricity and Energy, said the government has started defining the grid access and connection rules and regulations, and is codifying these for the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), so that these will eventually become license conditions for grid access by independent power producers.

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