South Africa is the new hotspot for wind installation and has great potential for capacity addition over the next four years. Over 3 Gigawatts (GW) is expected to be installed by 2020, bringing the country’s cumulative capacity up to 5.6 GW, according to research and consulting firm GlobalData.
The company’s latest report states that until 2012 the wind industry in South Africa was almost non-existent, with just about 10 Megawatts (MW) of cumulative installed capacity, which was installed over 10 years. Since then, installed capacity has swiftly improved, with 30 MW installed in 2013, 606 MW in 2014 and 483 MW in 2015. Pavan Vyakaranam, GlobalData’s Analyst covering Power, explains: “Despite the large capacity additions in 2014 and 2015, South Africa is still new to the wind industry, and it has huge wind power potential. At this point it is very important to have a system to determine wind speeds and other factors throughout the expanses of the country in order to plan installations, future capacity and infrastructure development in accordance with the wind potential in the different regions and sites.