The €200m wind farm will be supported by a 20-year power supply agreement with Eskom, as part of government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) tender, which awarded in April 2015 a total of five wind projects for 700MW to the Enel Group in its fourth round.
The project’s location in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa makes it well suited for wind generation, largely attributed to the strong wind current along the province’s coastline between Cookhouse and the western border of Lesotho. The region is in close proximity to major grid connections, making it convenient to feed energy into South Africa’s national electricity grid.
With the Nxuba wind farm now online, EGP RSA now has eight operational projects in the country, for an overall installed capacity exceeding 650MW. In the Eastern Cape province, in addition to Nxuba, EGP RSA has two other wind farms in operation, namely Nojoli (88MW) and Gibson Bay (111MW). In the Northern Cape, the company has solar plants Upington (10MW) and Adams (82.5MW). Additional solar plants include Pulida (82.5MW) in the Free State, Tom Burke (66MW) in Limpopo, and Paleishuewel (82.5MW) in the Western Cape. Two projects, Garob in the Northern Cape and Oyster Bay in the Eastern Cape, will commence full operation in the second quarter of 2021 and another two, Karusa and Soetwater in the Karoo Hoogland, in the fourth quarter of 2021, each with an installed capacity of 140MW.
The construction of the Nxuba wind farm involved local skills transfer, with EGP RSA enlisting the services of small and medium enterprises from the local Blue Crane Route and Raymond Mhlaba municipalities to assist in the construction. Additionally, the concrete tower sections were manufactured locally in the town of Somerset East.
