The photo is sourced from scatec.com
A quarter of the power (250 MW out of 540 MW) will be supplied to Kenhardt, the city located 120 km away from Upington, the most populous city in the Northern Cape province.
According to the World Bank, 12% of households in South Africa have no access to electricity while in rural areas, which are home to almost one third of the country’s population this figure is 25%. The project is aimed to increase accessibility to electricity in the country.
South Africa remains the leader in solar power development in Africa, accounting for almost 40% of the regional growth in solar generation capacity in 2021 (231 MW out of 598 MW, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency). The share of South Africa in the installed capacity of photovoltaic plants in Africa reached 55% last year (6.2 GW out of 11.4 GW).
South Africa plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. One of the key CO2 emitters in the country is the power industry. According to the Ember Research Center, the share of coal in the national power generation mix was 84.4% in 2021, while the share of gas and oil products was 0.8% and 1.2%, respectively. The remaining 13.6% was distributed between nuclear reactors (5.3%), as well as renewable energy sources (RES), including wind turbines (3.4%), hydropower plants (2.7%), solar panels (2%) and bioenergy power plants (0.2%).
