Juwi Renewable Energies, a Germany-based solar, wind and hybrid project developer, today announced the 84MW Wolf Wind Project in the Eastern Cape has reached financial close.
In a statement, the firm says exploding public and private demand for large-scale renewables due to SA’s energy crisis led to rapid expansion of the clean energy company’s footprint across the country, with over 1.5GW of wind, 2GW of solar and 500MW of hybrid projects incorporating storage in development for private and public energy users.
The Wolf Wind Project, located two hours from the city of Gqeberha, was successfully bid by Red Rocket in round five of the South African government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REI4P).
According to Juwi, construction has started and the facility is projected to begin generating electricity for the South African grid by Q1 2024.
It is the second wind project developed by Juwi to reach financial close under the REI4P – the first being the 138MW Garob Wind Project that was successful in the previous REI4P bid round and which reached commercial operation in 2021.
“Juwi is committed to developing projects that help SA address the energy crisis and achieve the clean energy transition, and therefore the progress in rolling out REI4P projects is very encouraging,” says Richard Doyle, MD of Juwi South Africa.
“Concurrently, it is heartening to see the exponential growth in demand from the public and private sectors for large-scale renewable projects, and for hybrid projects that integrate battery storage. To support this demand, we plan to initiate the development of a further combined 1GW of wind, solar and hybrid projects in 2023.”
“As a South African company and an independent power producer, we’ve been investing in solutions to address the energy crisis for over 10 years,” says Matteo Brambilla, CEO of Red Rocket.
“We’re proud to have partnered with Juwi on this project and pleased to have started construction on this and other large wind projects.
“The Wolf Wind Project will be generating more than 360GWh of clean electricity for the South African grid per year, offsetting 374 400 tonnes of CO2 each year and the project will bring over R200 million community investment over 20 years through local social projects.”
“A key barrier to bringing large projects like Wolf online is grid capacity,” says Chris Bellingham, head of project development at Juwi South Africa.
“Whilst we’re working on ways to overcome the challenges imposed on many of our projects by the Cape grid constraints, to meet the significant and growing demand for clean reliable power, we’re also actively developing a large portfolio of new and regionally diverse projects in unconstrained areas of the country’s grid.”
Share