Government has selected 25 preferred bidders in its latest effort to beef up renewable electricity supply as the country grapples with power shortages.
The tender for 2.6GW was launched in April to find the quickest options to ease a power shortage that has cost the economy billions of rand.
“The outcome of the evaluation process … has resulted in the selection of the 25 preferred bidder projects, procuring a total of 2 583MW,” energy minister Gwede Mantashe told a media briefing.
Mantashe said a request for proposals for the procurement of 2.6GW under the next bid round for private power producers will go to the market by the end of January 2022.
State power utility Eskom regularly implements power outages because of faults at its ailing coal fleet, holding back economic growth.
On Monday, Eskom said South Africa needed an extra 4GW to 6GW of generation capacity to eliminate the risk load shedding. — Reported by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, (c) 2021 Reuters