Cape Town - Africa’s largest wind farm, with 60 turbines, has been officially opened at Jeffreys Bay.
The 138MW power plant, which has been producing electricity since December, is among the projects in the government’s renewable energy programme, through which private companies bid to build renewable energy power stations.
The wind farm, close to the N2 in the Eastern Cape, has the capacity to supply enough energy for about 100 000 households.
Mark Pickering, general manager of the Jeffreys Bay Wind Farm, said on Wednesday that the wind farm would contribute about 460 000 megawatt hours of electricity a year to the national grid.
“In a country struggling to meet its escalating demands for electricity, we are proud to be contributing.”
Pickering said wind farms would invest more than R5-billion of their revenue in socio-economic development programmes over the next 20 years. The wind farm site is 3 700ha. Each wind turbine is 80m high with blades 49m long and a rotor diameter of 101m. Each turbine generates 2.3MW of energy.
Construction began in December 2012 and all 60 turbines had been erected by February. It began feeding electricity into Eskom’s grid in December and was fully commissioned in April. - Cape Times