18 New Wind Farms for South Africa

Mainstream and Genesis will be providing 70 percent of the funds needed to make this project possible. In addition to this major commitments from ABSA and the Development Bank of Southern Africa have put up some further funds for the wind farm in Jeffrey’s Bay. Barclays Capital has also contributed by partnering with Mainstream

The project will require a feed-in tariff for wind energy between R1 and R1.05 a kilowatt-hour. Should the tariff come in below this level, the partners would have to rethink the financing mechanisms. However, Chown stated that even if this did happen it would only slow things down and that it would not stop them.

Mainstream already has several successful projects in Canada, Chile, Scotland, the US and Europe. - SimplyGreen.co.za

clipped from www.simplygreen.co.za Ireland's Mainstream Renewable Power developer and Genesis Eco-Energy have recently announced their plans to develop 18 wind farms situated in various parts of South Africa such as Jeffrey’s Bay and Colesberg by 2014. The project will cost approximately R11 billion to complete and will add roughly 500MW of electricity to the national grid. The project has come about due to its huge potential to spur growth, create jobs, kick start South Africa’s renewable energy sector and ,of course, mounting concerns about the contribution of coal-based electricity to climate change. Davin Chown, the director of operations at Genesis, said the joint venture was ready to start construction of two wind farms with combined capacity of 70MW next year which are expected to be up and running by 2011. The other projects would be in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape, each generating between 30 and 150MW.