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South Africa's energy regulator has approved generation licences for new five solar power plants with a combined capacity of 860MW.
The five projects are among six that were named as preferred bidders in December last year as part of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy's latest push to procure more green energy.
"The National Energy Regulator of South Africa analysed the applications and determined that they meet all the licensing requirements. No objections to the applications were received," the regulator said.
Two are to be in the Free State and three in the North West, with the largest proposal - that of a 240MW solar plant - north of Bloemfontein in the Matjhabeng municipality.
The government had hoped that bid window 6 of its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme would add up to 4 200MW to the grid. But in the end, only a handful of solar projects were named as preferred bidders due to a severe lack of grid capacity.
Some two dozen wind power projects were not awarded preferred bidder status because the areas of the Western and Eastern Cape where they wanted to build lacked available capacity.
"We can generate as much [renewable energy] as we want. If we don't have grid capacity, what is the point?" said Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe at a briefing in December.
The five solar projects will now look to achieve commercial closure, meaning locking down all the funding required as well as any other outstanding authorisations. The builds are expected to take around two years.
