South Africa has never built a wind farm at sea, and the first one proposed would sit off Richards Bay. It is called Gagasi, and if all goes to plan it could start supplying electricity to the grid in about five years. Getting there means a string of steps that nobody in the country has taken before.
The developer is GenesisHexicon, a joint venture between Sweden's Hexicon and South Africa's Genesis Eco-Energy Developments. Its current plan is for 54 turbines with 810 megawatts of capacity between them, and about three-quarters of that capacity would come from turbines fixed to the seabed, with the rest floating. Alongside the design work, it is finalising a lease for the seabed and talking to companies that might buy the power.
A rectangle of turbines off the port
The site runs parallel to the coast in a long rectangle, with Richards Bay port opposite its southern end. In that southern section the nearest turbine would stand about 16km offshore and the furthest about 22km. The northern section sits closer in, between roughly 5km and 10km from the shore.
The design has already cost the project some time. In mid-September Reuters reported that the environmental study had stalled, with the consultancy running it waiting on new technical information from the developers. GenesisHexicon had withdrawn its environmental scoping report to take in technological advances, and it is now preparing to resubmit it.
Nobody has asked for this before
Being first is slow. Because this is the first application of its kind, the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved still have to be clarified, and Moneyweb reports that could take time. The developers hope to get environmental approval next year, which could let them make the final decision to invest within a year or two after that. If everything lands, construction could start in 2030 and take 12 to 18 months before the wind farm begins selling power.
Gagasi is also the first test of a much bigger idea. Earlier this month the government and the World Bank published a framework that put South Africa's offshore wind potential at 95 gigawatts, almost twice the size of Eskom's entire installed fleet. Most of that potential is for floating turbines, while Gagasi is planned to stand mostly on the seabed. The framework reckons offshore wind could support more than 300,000 job-years of full-time work by 2050.
Genesis Eco-Energy, one half of the venture, has said it will give a project update in October.
