South Africa to bid 1800 MW among unsuccessful bidders from Windows 1 to 4
South Africa’s Minister of Energy, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, announced last week that the government will issue a "request for further proposals" (RFP) for projects across all technology types from bidders who were unsuccessful in rounds one to four of the programme.
The written statement issued on Thursday, April 16th indicated that this round will be launched by June this year and will seek to procure additional 1,800 MW of capacity.
CSP bidders and projects awarded in past bidding rounds include:
Source: CSP Today Global Tracker, April 2015.
Joemat-Pettersson also revealed the winning bidders of Window 4 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Programme (REIPPPP). It included 13 bidders, of which 676 MW are wind and 415 MW are solar PV projects. As previously reported by CSP Today, there was no allocation of CSP in this bidding round.
It is expected that the financial close for Window 4 projects will occur at the end of this year, with commercial operations starting from November 2016.
The statement also made reference to Window 5 and indicated the RFP for this bidding round will be issued in the second quarter of 2016. This new RFP will include a revised definition of “local community, the mechanisms to ensure early, efficient and equitable benefits to the communities and the local content or industrialisation regime, as well as to take into account the constrained distribution and industrialisation regime,” the paper stated.