South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom will launch an international turbine tender for its first utility-scale wind farm towards the end of the year or early in 2011, NewNet has learned.Dr Steve Lennon, divisional executive, corporate services at Eskom said plans to build a 100MW have now been approved and the project is in the detailed design phase.
‘We will probably be going out on an open enquiry on that by the end of this year, very early next year. That will be for the purchase of the turbines themselves. That is an international tender,’ Lennon said.
The utility is waiting to receive government decisions on just how much the individual renewable energy targets will be and how much of them Eskom and independent power producers will build.
‘We will make progress on our renewables footprint and we have had approvals already on two major renewable projects,’ he said.
Alongside the wind farm, Eskom will also build a solar demonstration plant.
‘Our current thinking is this will be a 100MW central receiving solar thermal plant. We have secured the land and environmental approvals.’
Both of these projects are being funded by the recently announced World Bank loan and although the turbine tender is international, Lennon is keen for it also to encourage the development of a domestic manufacturing base.
‘We do want to see how many of these turbines could be established domestically,’ he said.
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