By David McDonald, CEO at SolarAfrica
For greater than a decade, South Africa’s vitality sector was caught in a continuing state of disaster. However come 2025, and we lastly noticed an actual step change throughout the business, as we began to maneuver from firefighting to future-facing mode.
And whereas it’s not but excellent – and it actually hasn’t been clean crusing – for these of us within the renewable vitality area, it felt like watching a sector lengthy caught in impartial lastly click on into gear.
Listed below are 5 massive energy strikes that this 12 months introduced us.
Energy Transfer 1: SA strikes in the direction of a wholesale vitality market
With the approaching introduction of the South African Wholesale Power Market (SAWEM) in 2026, this 12 months shall be remembered because the 12 months South Africa lastly put actual oomph behind electrical energy market reform. With SAWEM, South Africa will shift from a single-buyer system (Eskom controls every thing) to a aggressive and open electrical energy market – one thing we’ve been speaking about for years, however are actually lastly shifting on.
A couple of quick weeks in the past, the Nationwide Power Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) accredited the nation’s first market operator licence – a precursor to the launch of SAWEM – which factors to a future the place a number of personal gamers can commerce and wheel energy freely, like an “electrical energy inventory change”.
This shift will in the end set the scene for a wholesale market the place mills can promote to a number of offtakers, and the place licensed merchants can compete on value and suppleness. It will unlock extra personal funding, extra competitors, decrease costs – whereas for companies, this heralds a brand new period of alternative, the place firms may have extra company than ever earlier than on the subject of their vitality combine.
Energy Transfer 2: The Nice Buying and selling Licence Increase (however there’s nonetheless no playbook)
If 2024 was a trickle, 2025 was the watershed. Demand for electrical energy buying and selling licences skyrocketed as firms rushed to safe their place within the rising service provider market.
Whereas this growth unfolded in parallel with guidelines which can be nonetheless being outlined, the lingering uncertainty did little to cease the momentum. The business’s need to dynamically purchase and promote energy has outpaced regulation, demonstrating how desperately the nation’s C&I sector needs alternate options to the normal mannequin, which is solely reliant on the nationwide grid. And it’s clear that when the ultimate framework drops, we will anticipate market participation to climb much more aggressively.
Energy Transfer 3: One-to-many technology turns into a actuality
Historically, Impartial Energy Producers (IPPs) would signal one energy buy settlement (PPA) with one buyer, generally known as a “one-to-one” mannequin. Nevertheless, we noticed a serious milestone that modified the South African vitality sector in 2025: a single utility-scale photo voltaic farm noticed its energy come on-line, enabling the wheeling of vitality to a number of company clients concurrently in a “one-to-many” technology mannequin.
And whereas this Free State-based photo voltaic farm drew the headlines, the importance is much higher: South Africa now has proof of idea that large-scale personal technology can serve a large group of offtakers, by a shared asset mannequin.
SolarAfrica, by its SunCentral venture positioned between De Aar and Hanover and which boasts a complete 1GW capability, is an instance of one other developer that can cater to this aggregated offtake atmosphere, with its energy anticipated to return on-line in early 2026. Count on many others to observe swimsuit.
Energy Transfer 4: Non-public capital enters the group chat
Maybe one of many greatest energy strikes of 2025 pertained to an announcement at this 12 months’s Medium-Time period Price range Coverage Assertion (MTBPS), which might see authorities lastly permit personal sector participation in transmission infrastructure. This contains third-party funded transmission traces, personal grid growth (with Eskom oversight) and cost-sharing fashions between IPPs and the state-owned entity.
The importance of that is that it permits personal sector to co-fund and co-develop sections of South Africa’s transmission community, serving to broaden capability by assuaging the bottlenecks created by Eskom’s grid constraints; bottlenecks that throttle the roll-out of renewable energy.
Energy Transfer 5: Company SA goes all in on renewables
If there was any lingering doubt about whether or not corporates had been able to embrace renewables at scale, 2025 settled it.
Heavy vitality customers – from mining and automotive to manufacturing and agriculture – signed a few of the largest renewable PPAs within the nation’s historical past, lots of them underneath wheeling buildings. Whereas pushed, partly, by sustainability issues such because the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), affordability can also be a key cause behind this development, with tariffs persevering with to climb.
This collective transfer has strengthened the case for utility-scale personal technology and sped up demand for versatile wheeling options; areas the place we at SolarAfrica have personally seen elevated curiosity from companies looking for stability over the approaching years.
One factor’s for certain: if this was the 12 months the gears lastly clicked into place, 2026 is when the business actually picks up pace. Buckle up.
About SolarAfrica
Based in 2011, SolarAfrica offers a set of capex-free inexperienced vitality options to the business and industrial sectors in Southern Africa. The holistic suite contains on-site options similar to photo voltaic vitality and battery storage along with digital options like wheeling, buying and selling and aggregation.
SolarAfrica companions with companies in South Africa looking for an vitality resolution that gives energy safety, price financial savings and carbon discount – constructing in the direction of long-term sustainability.
The corporate has developed into an bold group who’re enthusiastic about what they do and the core values they uphold. SolarAfrica has been named the continent’s main photo voltaic vitality agency twice, scooping the Africa Photo voltaic Trade Affiliation’s African Photo voltaic Firm of the Yr award in 2021 and 2023.
