There’s been a constant stream of private power purchase agreement announcements lately. Discovery Green alone says it has signed up 50 companies to its energy wheeling platform and has 740MW of generation under development that will supply those customers. It’s not the only licensed energy trader in South Africa. Property company Growthpoint and energy trader Etana also launched a pooled wheeling initiative in Cape Town recently which we wrote about in our last newsletter.
We asked Growthpoint Properties’ head of corporate advisory Dr Werner van Antwerpen to unpack what wheeling is and what it means for tenants. He said it’s not a physics thing about moving an electron from one place to another, but rather a “massive accounting engine”. This is why Growthpoint chose to go through an electricity trader, so they could handle the accounting.
He also described the renewable energy certificates Growthpoint has started to offer selected tenants in 10 of its Sandton buildings, including Nedbank. Companies can use these certificates in their reporting to show how they reduce their emissions. The certification system runs on a blockchain platform that feeds the international I-REC registry in London, which prevents double-counting. “If it’s been redeemed, it’s taken out of the whole blockchain circular environment,” he said, and the certificates expire, so tenants can’t bank them across multiple reporting years. Click here to read more. Subscribers can watch the recording of the webinar here.
All the wheeling deals are just a symptom of massive changes happening in the electricity sector in South Africa. There are hundreds of new independent power projects on the cards. The National Energy Regulator’s list of registered generation projects has 112 renewable energy projects that are 50MW or more, 86 of which are over 100MW. These are not the REIPPPP private power producers that have purchase agreements with Eskom.
NEW 📢 Outlier Renew is starting a new Africa Electricity Monthly Report where we compile information about all the project updates, financing deals, contracts and acquisitions that we add to our database each month. Our first report for May 2026 is available to download here. The June report will be available in early July.
RENEWABLE PIN-UP
A turbine is being hoisted up onto one of Koruson 2’s wind farms, the 140MW Hartebeesthoek wind farm. (Photo: EDF/LinkedIn)
A cluster of wind and solar projects, the 520MW Koruson 2, is partially operational. It’s one of South Africa’s largest private renewable energy projects to date. The R15-billion project combines 240MW of solar PV and two wind farms totalling 280MW. The power is sold to Anglo American Platinum, Kumba Iron Ore, and De Beers under 20-year offtake agreements with Envusa Energy.
Location: Eastern Cape and Northern Cape, South Africa
Total capacity: 520MW
Wind farms: Umsobomvu Wind Farm (140MW), Hartebeesthoek Wind Farm (140MW)
Solar farm: Mooi Plaats solar PV farm (240MW)
Project partners: Anglo American, EDF power solutions, Pele Green Energy and a community trust
Who’s buying the power: Anglo American Platinum (461MW of supply), Kumba Iron Ore’s Kolomela mine (11MW) and De Beer’s Venetia mine (48MW)
Carbon dioxide offset: 2.2-million tonnes of CO2 per year
NEWS WRAP
⚡️ The National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) has a backlog of close to R1-billion on curtailment payments to independent power producers, writes energy analyst John Yelland. Curtailment is when the NTCSA, which is Eskom’s system operator, asks a power producer to temporarily reduce their electricity output, usually because the total electricity supply exceeds demand or when there are network constraints. It’s done to maintain the safe and reliable operation of the grid. IPPs are contractually entitled to be paid for the electricity they are ready to deliver even it is not used. The NTCSA admits that there has been a sharp rise in the volume of claims related to curtailment this year which has created “temporary bottlenecks” in payments. The NTCSA pays about R45-billion a year to independent power producers and it has power purchase agreements with 117 projects with a combined capacity of 10,083MW.
☀️ Construction has started at Botswana’s 100MW Tati Solar Project near Francistown, says Shumba Energy, a Botswana-based energy development company. The project development is being led by Etavi Renewables. Rand Merchant Bank was the lead arranger for the $100-million financing package. Commercial operation is targeted for 2027. The electricity generated will be sold into the regional Southern African Power Pool.
🌲 Discovery Green has signed a 10-year power purchase agreement with York Timber Holdings, a solid wood processor, to provide renewable energy to its Jessievale sawmill in Mpumalanga. The agreement will enable 90% of the sawmill’s electricity to be sourced from renewables.
🚘 Zero Carbon CHARGE reports that more than 200 vehicles have used their solar-powered EV chargers in the four weeks since they opened. They purchased over 4MWh of renewable energy, surpassing the company’s expectations, says Andries Malherbe, one of CHARGE’s cofounders, who posted the chart below on LinkedIn showing how many vehicles stopped per day and how many kWh were consumed.
💰 The African Development Bank has approved a $100-million financing package for the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) – the financial arm of the Economic Community of West African States – which includes a $70-million long-term credit facility to finance new clean energy projects in West Africa. This is expected to mobilise $230-million in financing for renewable energy generation, particularly solar and hydroelectric projects, by strengthening EBID’s capacity to support private sector development and investment in renewable energy in West Africa, according to the AfDB.
☀️ Zambia’s Ministry of Energy signed a power purchase agreement with South Korean company KS Eco Solutions for the development of a 500MW solar power project with battery storage. The solar project will be developed in 10 phases, each of 50MW.
✍🏾 Global infrastructure investor AP Moller Capital’s Emerging Markets Infrastructure Fund II has signed an agreement to acquire Mainstream Renewable Power’s South Africa operations. Mainstream has 148MW of operating and in-construction assets, 351MW of construction-ready projects and a development pipeline of 11.6GW spanning solar, wind and battery storage opportunities.
💰 Zafiri, a $176-million blended permanent-capital investment vehicle, was launched this month. It will deploy ‘patient equity’ into distributed renewable energy companies and projects across Sub-Saharan Africa, including mini-grids, solar home systems, productive-use energy solutions, and clean cooking enterprises. Climate investment company Inspired Evolution will manage Zafiri. The founding shareholders include the International Finance Corporation, the African Development Bank Group, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Trade and Development Bank Group, the Nordic Development Fund, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation and FirstRand Limited.
🤝 Eskom, the National Transmission Company of South Africa, RTE International, a European consulting and engineering firm, and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a technical cooperation programme to support the modernisation of South Africa’s power transmission network. The initiative is supported through a R12-million grant from AFD, financed by the French National Treasury.
💰 The World Bank has approved a $1.6-billion financing package for a Regional Energy Transmission, Trade & Decarbonisation programme for Eastern Africa (RETRADE-EA). The 10-year initiative intends to accelerate regional power integration, expand energy access and unlock economic opportunity. The first phase will support the Uganda-Tanzania interconnector project, a new high-voltage electricity transmission line connecting Uganda to Tanzania. It will create a connection between Uganda’s surplus clean energy resources and regional energy markets. RETRADE-EA will also support the launch of the Eastern Africa Power Pool Day-Ahead Market.
INSIGHTS & EVENTS
🚗 If you have an electric vehicle, A Better Routeplanner (ABRP) is a handy app to help you plan your trips. You can type in your destination, what type of car you have, and it will show you the charging stations on your route (see screenshot of a Noordhoek to Stellenbosch trip). We learned about ABRP from Zero Carbon CHARGE, who recently opened three solar-powered vehicle charging stations on the N3 to Durban – which are on the app.
💻 The global launch of the Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 is happening on 30 June 2026. The Energy Institute is hosting a webinar to share insights from the review that will include a panel discussion and audience Q&A. Find our more here.
💻 EE Business Intelligence is hosting a webinar on 8 July exploring the potential of virtual power plants (VPPs) in South Africa’s evolving electricity landscape. VPPs are a way to aggregate, optimise and dispatch distributed energy resources – like large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS); residential, commercial, industrial and mining solar PV and BESS; electric vehicles; and demand market response – as if they were a single utility-scale power plant. Find out more here
Note: A previous version of this article stated Koruson 2 was fully operational. It is not yet fully operational. Only 380MW are fully operational (Mooi Plaats Solar and Umsobomvu Wind farms) with Hartebeesthoek Wind Farm expected to be fully operational in August 2026.