Wind farms are all the rage in South Africa lately and NERSA (National Energy Regulator of South Africa) is scheduled to hold public hearings on an Eskom wind farm that the company proposes to construct in the Vredendal area of the Western Cape. The hearings are scheduled to take place on June 5.
The South African electricity giant proposes a wind farm with an initial capacity of 100 MW, with perhaps a future capacity expansion to 200 MW. If the project gets the go ahead, operators would aim to bring it online in 2010.
The project has been dubbed the Koekenaap wind-farm project. Eskom has already put potential financing in place, having signed a 20-year €100-million framework loan agreement with French development agency Agence Française de Dèveloppement (AFD) for partial financing of the wind-farm project.
With the country’s critical power crisis, both the public and private sector are increasingly looking at renewable forms of energy to power the country. South Africa, due to host the 2010 World Cup, could certainly use all the additional electrical power it can manage by that time.
Last week it was announced that a public and private sector grouping has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to construct an 80 MW wind farm in the Cape. The grouping includes the Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, along with Seeland Development Trust, the Saldanha Municipality, Oxfam UK, and Genesis Eco-Energy.
The cost of this proposed new wind farm has been estimated at about R850 million (about $112 million) and would have an 80 MW initial capacity. The new project has been coined the St. Helena Bay Wind Farm, complementing its proposed location in St. Helena Bay. This area is reported to have an average wind speed of six meters per second.
Both of these projects would follow the small Darling Wind Farm which came online last month.