SA’s renewable energy sector rallies behind grid expansion following release of 2025 SAREGS results

Stakeholders across South Africa’s renewable energy sector joined for the much-anticipated SAREGS 2025 Results Webinar, hosted by the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) and the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA).

The event (on 27 October 2025) marked a pivotal moment in the sector’s collaborative efforts to align renewable energy project development with national grid planning.

The 4th Annual South African Renewable Energy Grid Survey, conducted in partnership with the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), provides crucial insights into the state of grid capacity, project development and emerging trends such as wheeling and corporate power procurement.

This year’s results underline both the sector’s rapid growth and the urgent need for co-ordinated infrastructure expansion to unlock stranded renewable capacity.

Key outcomes from the 2025 SAREGS results

Wheeling and off-taker dynamics

The latest survey reflects a significant shift toward wheeling arrangements and private power purchase agreements, following the approval of South Africa’s Wheeling Framework. Data collected provides visibility into corporate procurement trends and third-party grid access.

Identifying grid congestion hotspots

SAREGS 2025 highlights areas where grid constraints have delayed or stalled projects. These insights are expected to help NTCSA and Eskom prioritise transmission upgrades in high-demand zones, aligning investment with actual project pipelines.

Policy integration

The survey continues to feed directly into key national planning tools including the Transmission and Distribution Development Plan (TDP), and the Congestion Curtailment Proposal, which aims to free up 3.4GW of stranded capacity in constrained regions.

The 2025 Renewable Energy Survey also highlighted continued momentum and scaling across the sector:

• Total reported capacity now exceeds 220GW – reflecting an 86GW increase compared to the 2024 survey.
• Installed capacity surged by 86GW compared to 2024.
• Development-stage projects grew by 60GW, signalling a robust pipeline.
• Hybrid systems now represent 46% of total contracted capacity, compared to 25% in the previous year.
• 190 additional contributors participated, reflecting expanding industry engagement.

This year’s survey once again reaffirmed industry’s willingness to share project data to support co-ordinated transmission planning. To maintain commercial confidentiality, raw survey data remains under the sole management of NTCSA’s planning team, with SAPVIA and SAWEA receiving only aggregated insights.

“The SAREGS results demonstrates that the renewable energy industry is more than ready to respond to its allocation in the recently announced IRP 2025. It also provides data-driven view of where the transmission and distribution bottlenecks are and, more importantly, where transmission infrastructure development should be prioritised. Industry and NTCSA are now better equipped than ever to work together to unlock capacity where it’s needed most,” says Dr Rethabile Melamu, CEO of SAPVIA.

“With the IRP and the Wheeling Framework now in place, these results provide the foundation for a more efficient and transparent grid planning process that supports both public and private sector investment.”

SAREGS 2024 delivered invaluable stakeholder data, representing over 120GW of South African energy generation projects under development.

The 2025 results reflect a maturing collaboration between the government, grid operators and the private sector. The insights generated will inform Eskom’s TDP and Grid Capacity Connection Assessments, helping align infrastructure delivery with the pace of renewable energy development.

SAPVIA and SAWEA have called on independent power producers to continue engaging actively with the survey process in future iterations to ensure planning remains responsive to market realities.

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