All these projects are in the sunny Northern Cape where they create thousands of jobs and are 20% owned by their local communities. The Independent Power Producers (IPPs) who own these projects have 20-year Power Purchase Agreements with Eskom. Three of the five Siemens Energy-supplied Concentrated Solar Power Plants have multi-year Service Agreements in place with the IPPs who own and operate them.
The flagship project, KaXu Solar One, helped unlock the South African CSP market in 2015 as the first private sector, utility-scale CSP project in the developing world. Looking at KaXu’s combined impact with Xina Solar One and Khi Solar One, it is significant: together they power close to 220 000 homes during peak times with clean solar energy and eliminate close to 700 000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.
The 100MW Redstone CSP plant, which is currently under construction, is the first project-financed project in the world for CSP with a molten salt central receiver. It is also one of the largest investments in South Africa under the REIPPPP. With 12 hours of full-load energy storage, Redstone will be able to reliably deliver a stable electricity supply to more than 200 000 South African homes during peak demand periods, even well after the sun has set.
Siemens Energy is committed to its role in developing South Africa’s sustainable energy landscape, both as a partner to ESKOM and Sasol in their green energy transition, and as a supplier and partner to many large and small private sector players who build, own, and operate the country’s growing number of private or public-private energy plants.
South Africa has an
estimated number of more than 220 power stations. This includes an estimated 18 coal-fired power stations collectively delivering up to 46GW of installed capacity, 59 hydroelectric power plants (in SA and Mozambique) delivering about 2.3GW of power, seven gas turbine power plants collectively delivering about 3.5GW of capacity, as well as 38 wind farm projects collectively delivering an estimated 3.3GW of installed capacity, eight CSP projects and 69 solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 1.7GW.
