South Africa is “blowing” away the high cost of conventional electricity production with its first ever grid connected, independent energy, power-generating wind farm facility, the long awaited Darling Wind Farm Project.
The R75 million wind farm, located in Darling, Western Cape, consists of four German-designed wind turbines. Each structure is 50 meters high with a blade span of 31 meters, producing an estimated 1.3-megawatt (MW) each for a total generation capacity of 5.2 MW of clean electricity.
The Darling project was conceptualized over a decade ago and approved to be the country’s first independent power producer in 2005. Hermann Oelsner, CEO of the Oelsner Group, a shareholder in Darling Wind Power, has said that while only four turbines are operational in this phase of the project, he believes that the project has vast potential and the project can be expanded significantly. It is currently planned for Darling, over two phases, to produce 13 MW from ten 1.3 MW wind turbines,
The Cape Town municipality will initially buy the power produced during the first phase of the project an amount that will meet half the electricity requirements of the city council’s head office, reports say. It is estimated that 254,000 tons of carbon dioxide will be reduced from entering the atmosphere during the project’s lifetime.
Efforts by power players including the Department of Minerals and Energy, the Central Energy Fund, and the Darling Independent Power Producers, together worked on Darling in what has come to be known as the National Demonstration Project. This venture will benchmark future private-public partnerships in the establishment of alternative electricity generation throughout South Africa, and one day, maybe, the entire continent.