South Africa’s new biggest wind farm coming soon — with the world’s most powerful turbines

Tags

---

12-08-2025
Read : 41 times
My Broadband
Source

Construction on what should become South Africa’s largest wind power station, 12km outside Swellendam in the Western Cape, is in full swing.

Independent Power Producer Red Rocket recently announced it had reached financial close and begun construction on phase 2 of the Overberg Wind Farm, which will contribute 158MW to the project.

This phase’s anticipated 489GWh of annual energy will be sold to Discovery Green and used by Impala Platinum, Foress Real Estate Investments, and Balwin Properties through wheeling agreements.

Construction of the project’s first phase began in March 2025 and is expected to deliver 242MW. This part of the plant will supply Richard Bay Minerals with 750GWh of energy annually.

Once completed, the Overberg Wind Farm will have a capacity of 400MW, more than double the 147MW peak output of each of the current three biggest wind farms in South Africa.

It will be capable of producing 1,239GWh of electricity annually, the most of any wind farm with private offtakers in the world.

The farm will consist of 54 Goldwind GWH182/6.2MW wind turbines and nine Goldwind GWH182/7.2MW turbines.

The latter’s capacity matches the largest and most powerful onshore wind farm turbine currently in operation globally.

The former is also larger and more powerful than most other wind turbines currently operating in South Africa.

Overberg will also be the second-largest wind farm in Africa — after Egypt’s 545MW Zafarana Wind Farm — once it reaches full commercial operation. That is expected to happen in early 2027.

The world’s two largest wind farms are the Xinjiang Hami and Gansu Wind Farms in China, with capacities of 11,947MW and 10,450MW, respectively.

Only nine countries currently have onshore wind farms with capacities of 400MW or greater. Aside from China and Egypt, Australia, Brazil, India, Norway, Romania, Sweden, and the UK have wind farms with these capacities.

The Overberg Wind Farm is being funded with financing from Absa Bank, Standard Bank, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Red Rocket already a private energy giant

Red Rocket is already a formidable IPP in South Africa. It currently has 4GW of projects operational, under construction, or approaching financial close.

It operates one of the three largest wind farms in South Africa — the 147MW Roggeveld Wind Farm — as well as the Brandvalley and Rietkloof facilities, each with 144MW capacity.

While wind farms have been criticised for killing birds, Red Rocket was the first to implement an automated bird protection system.

“This advanced technology enables real-time detection and turbine shutdowns to protect vulnerable bird species,” the company says.

“The system is fully installed and operational at Brandvalley and Rietkloof Wind Farms and will be installed in all projects coming online.”

It also runs the 275MW Virginia Solar Park, which was the largest grid-connected solar power project at the time of construction commencement in 2024.

The company is developing another wind project, Wolf Wind Farm, in the Eastern Cape. This facility will use a cutting-edge turbine to improve generating efficiency in medium-to-low wind conditions.

Red Rocket also secured 590MW of the 1,290MW capacity recently reallocated under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme Bid Window 7.

This includes a fourth-phase expansion of the Virginia Solar Park with another 210MW of capacity and a third-phase expansion of Dwaalboom Solar with a further 180MW.