South Africa’s Gauteng province plans US$1 billion rooftop PV spree

Sep 3, 2013 - Ben Willis - pv-tech.org

Qedani Mahlangu: Planned PV investment will add 300MW of new capacity. Image: mLabSA

The provincial government of Gauteng in South Africa is to spend over ZAR11 billion this year (US$1 billion) installing solar on all state-owned buildings in the province.

Speaking last week, Gauteng’s cabinet member for infrastructure development Qedani Mahlangu said the investment was in line with South Africa’s national plan, which aims for an increase in renewable energy generation.

 “This will enable us to harness the sun’s rays to meet, in part, government’s energy needs,” Malangu said.

“We have quantified the available roof top space on government-owned buildings to be approximately eight million square metres.”

Malangu said the planned programme would amount to generation capacity of 300MW at a cost of ZAR11.2 billion.

The country has just closed bidding for the third round of its national renewable energy procurement programme, which will award contracts for around 400MW of PV.

Power purchase agreements for over 1GW of PV have been awarded under the first two rounds of the programme.