Italian renewables company Enel Green Power (EGP) has announced that it successfully bid for more than half of the solar PV schemes approved by the South African government in the latest round of its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) scheme.
With the third round of the REIPPP completed on Tuesday, the South African government said it had approved PV schemes from six bidders adding up to 450 MW of generation.
And EGP, a subsidiary of Rome-based power company Enel, on Thursday announced four of the schemes, at Aurora, Northern Cape; Tom Burke, Western Cape; Paleisheweul, in Free State; and Pulida in the Limpopo region, were its own.
The four projects add up to 314 MWp and, together with EGP's two successful wind power bids at Gibson Bay and Cookhouse in Eastern Cape, will cost 630 million (US$867 million) to build, according to the Italian company, and are expected to be operating by 2016.
The PV projects will use thin film modules manaufactured by the 3Sun joint venture owned by EGP, French-Italian semiconductor group STMicroelectronics and Japanese electronics giant Sharp.
EGP's two wind power projects will generate 199 MW, 25% of the 787 MW awarded to onshore wind bidders in the latest round of the REIPPP.
The Italian company is already constructing a renewables project in the country through a subsidiary of the ESSE joint venture it set up with Sharp.
The South African government announced on Tuesday that it may give the green light for further PV and wind power schemes thanks to the demand from bidders.
With a decision due by November 20, bidders who miss out can prepare for the fourth round of the REIPPP next year with a July 21 deadline for registering bids.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.