South African Photovoltaic Trends and Outlook

In recent years, South Africa has been facing an increasingly severe power crisis due to problems such as aging and poor management of the state-owned power company ESKOM's power generation facilities. Long-term large-scale power cuts have caused serious losses to the country's economy. Against this background, South Africa has turned its attention to renewable energy including photovoltaics.

According to ESKOM, by the end of 2023, South Africa's cumulative photovoltaic installed capacity will be about 7.3 GW, of which distributed projects account for about 5 GW and centralized projects account for about 2.3 GW. In order to fill the growing power gap, the South African government has proposed a series of policies to promote the development of photovoltaics.

Due to the obstacles faced by centralized installation, the South African government has recently focused on simplifying administrative procedures and improving the power grid. For example, at the end of March 2024, South Africa announced that future centralized photovoltaic projects will not need to apply for environmental impact assessment permits after a comprehensive assessment of location, installed capacity and environmental impact, in order to accelerate project grid connection. Combined with the deferred projects in 2023 and the demand volume in 2024, Infolink predicts that South Africa's demand for photovoltaic modules will reach more than 4.2 GW in 2024, an increase of about 13.5% compared to 3.7 GW in 2023.

For the South African PV market, although distributed projects can provide some support for long-term component demand, considering ESKOM's financial situation, centralized projects may still be subject to grid absorption issues, and the South African government has not released more large-scale incentive policies. Therefore, after experiencing growth in 2023 and 2024, InfoLink expects that South Africa's component demand will decline after 2025, and the future market trend still needs to be observed.

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