Energy regulator Nersa has approved generation licences for four solar projects with a combined contracted capacity of 890MW, clearing another regulatory hurdle for the R16-billion final tranche of Bid Window 7 – the government renewables round that couldn’t award a single wind farm.

Nersa said the licences, approved at its meeting on 30 June, cover Sculptor Energy’s 240MW Rondebosch Solar Park, the 240MW Springhaas Solar Facility 1 and 170MW Springhaas Solar Facility 6, and Engie’s 240MW Corona Energy project. Nersa’s statement places Rondebosch in Mpumalanga and the Springhaas plants in the Free State. Corona is in North West, according to the December announcement of the projects – though provinces have been recorded inconsistently across official documents for this tranche.

The four were named preferred bidders in December by energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa following value-for-money negotiations, representing a combined investment of about R16-billion, with South African shareholders holding 49% of the projects and average empowerment participation of 40%.

Three of the four belong to Cape Town-based independent power producer Red Rocket, entrenching it as Bid Window 7’s biggest winner with 1.24GW of contracted capacity across six projects, including earlier awards in Limpopo and the Free State. The Springhaas plants were developed by Germany’s ABO Energy – its first success in the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme – with Rondebosch originally developed by Spain’s Mater Energia. Norway’s Scatec holds the round’s single biggest allocation, the 846MW Kroonstad cluster in the Free State.

Solar-only round

Bid Window 7 tells the story of South Africa’s grid crisis in miniature. The round sought 5GW of new capacity and drew 48 bids totalling more than 10GW – yet not one wind project was awarded, because transmission capacity in the country’s windiest provinces is exhausted. Instead, the round’s entire 3.94GW, spread across 18 projects, is solar – and all of it sits in Limpopo, the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga, provinces chosen for their spare grid connection capacity rather than the quality of their sunshine.

This underlines why the fight over Eskom’s transmission unbundling and the R440-billion grid expansion matters: until new transmission lines are built – the first are not expected before 2028 – procurement will keep chasing spare grid capacity rather than the best wind and sun.

Read: Eskom breaks ground on R1.2-billion Lethabo solar plant

Nersa received the four licence applications on 23 January and scheduled a public hearing for 7 May. In a sign of how uncontroversial utility solar has become, the hearing was cancelled: no objections were received and nobody registered to speak. The projects are expected to move to financial close and construction as Bid Window 7 enters its delivery phase. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media