In South Africa, solar generation overtook wind generation in 2023 and rose to 18.6TWh in 2025. Wind generation, on the other hand, hasn’t increased since 2023. In 2025, wind and solar together generated 29.9TWh. This is according to data from the Statistical Review of World Energy 2026.

Why has wind generation plateaued? The last time an independent power producer won a bid to build a wind farm in the government’s renewable energy procurement programme (REIPPPP) was in bid window 5 in 2021. Bid windows 6 and 7 were all solar projects. Grid space was an issue for wind projects in the REIPPP programme.

Also, the vast majority of private renewable projects registered with Nersa are solar. But, interestingly, 29 big wind projects (over 50MW) have been registered with Nersa since 2023. If those get built and connected to the grid, they could add 5GW of capacity.