Check out Africa’s largest solar farm
The Jasper Solar Farm, located near Kimberley, has become Africa’s largest solar power project since construction was completed in 2014.
The Jasper Solar Farm is fully operational to power up to 80 000 homes in South Africa. With a $12 million (R171 million) investment from Google, it forms the beginning of an alternative power energy source for the future South Africa.
It has a rated capacity of 96 megawatts and will produce about 180,000 hours of clean energy annually for South African residents.
The farm won’t stay the biggest solar project for long. A 100-megawatt concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) project called Redstone is also under construction in Postmasburg, near Kimberley. The Jasper Project generated about 1 million man-hours of paid work during construction, peaking at over 800 on-site construction jobs.
45% of the total project value was spent on “local content” to help increase the positive economic impact on the area.
As many South Africans can bear witness to, many households and businesses endured an alarming number of rolling blackouts because of lack of generating capacity. Due to these power generating problems, the government was forced to look at new potential sources of electricity. This led to South Africa having the highest growth in clean energy investment in the world in 2012. While SA is dependent on fossil fuels, its abundant resources of wind and sun have made it possible to diversify and to set itself the goal of installing 18 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Google has a recent history of investing in wind and solar power, and since 2010 has committed to more than US$1 billion (R14 billion) in renewable energy projects worldwide.
SolarReserve is the company that develops these large-scale solar energy projects. They joined forces with the Kensani Group (an experienced empowerment investment player in South Africa) and Intikon Energy (a South African developer of renewable energy projects) to develop three photovoltaic (PV) solar energy projects in SA. This consortium was awarded preferred bidder status in May 2012 by the Department of Energy. SolarReserve is busy on two other 75 megawatt projects, Letsatsi and Lesedi.
