South Africa now has more than 8GW of rooftop solar panels installed, on homes, businesses and factories, according to Eskom. We don’t have exact figures for home solar capacity, but StatsSA’s household survey shows the number of homes with solar panels jumped 86% in three years, reaching 675,000 in 2025. Gauteng and the Western Cape have two-thirds of these homes.

Most of that 8GW rooftop total isn’t on houses, though. It’s on shopping malls, warehouses and factories that switched to solar because of loadshedding and high Eskom prices.