Excelsior Wind Farm starts operations

Excelsior Wind Farm

Excelsior has a direct connection to the Vryheid substation, via an on-site substation and a dedicated 132kV power line, and will feed over 132GWh of renewable power, into the national grid, enough to power an estimated 35,000 South African homes each year.

The wind farm is constructed on 2,300 hectares of land in Swellendam, an area known as one of the largest agricultural producing areas in the country. By the very nature of wind power, over 90% of the land on the site will continue to yield agricultural crops as well as sustain livestock farming.

This marks the completion of the third independent power producer (IPP) project in South Africa in 2020 as part of the fourth round of the government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme by BioTherm Energy and emerging market investor Actis. The partnersip has already achieved commercial operation of the 132MW combined capacity of the solar plants Aggeneys and Konkoonsies II earlier in the year, providing a combined generating capacity of 165MW of the country’s renewable energy production.

“We ended 2020 on a high note, having led three IPPs to commercial operations, whilst having connected our fourth project to the grid expecting commercial operation in the first quarter of this year, which will add another 120MW to our generating capacity in South Africa,” says Robert Skjodt, CEO of BioTherm Energy.