A new milestone in South Africa’s renewable energy journey was reached in December 2025 when EDF power solutions announced that its Umoyilanga hybrid project successfully reached Provisional Commercial Operations Date (Provisional COD) with its Dassiesridge Plant in the Eastern Cape.
The Umoyilanga project combines solar, wind and battery storage technologies to offer dispatchable and reliable power to the national electrical grid, up to a contracted capacity of 75MW. Once fully complete, this innovative project will operate as a virtual power plant, combining generation from two sites which are 900km apart, namely Avondale in the Northern Cape, with 115MW of solar PV and 30MW of battery storage, and Dassiesridge in the Eastern Cape, with 63MW of wind and 45MW of battery storage. The low-carbon electricity produced will help to meet the electricity needs of 120 000 households for 20 years, based on the Eskom residential consumption average of 3 319kWh/household.
The construction phase of Dassiesridge was completed over a two-year period, thanks to the mobilisation of local workers for close to one-million man-hours. This milestone was achieved in partnership with contractors Power Construction and Adenco (balance of plant) and Vestas (wind turbines). Furthermore, the project has successfully fulfilled its economic development commitments, specifically regarding local content and local procurement. Under the terms of the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) signed with National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), the Dassiesridge facility will now start delivering a net-dependable capacity of 55MW to the grid.
This provisional period will continue until Umoyilanga reaches full COD, upon the commissioning of the Avondale Plant. Following full COD, local communities and enterprises surrounding the facilities will benefit from an investment of over R200-million committed by the project towards supplier, skills, enterprise and socio-economic development initiatives over the 20-year operating period.
“Our focus now shifts fully to optimising dispatched energy with Dassiesridge and resolving outstanding issues at Avondale to achieve full COD as early as possible in 2026,” said Gregoire de Montgolfier, Umoyilanga Project Director.
This important announcement follows in the wake of the consortium of leading international renewable energy supplier, EDF Renewables (now EDF power solutions) and privately held investment company Perpetua Holdings (Pty) Ltd, winning the Umoyilanga project bid in the South African Government’s Risk Mitigation IPP Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP), in March 2021. The project then achieved Commercial and Financial Close on 28 November 2023, after signing the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and the Implementation Agreement (IA) on 30 August 2023.
About EDF power solutions
Bringing together the businesses of EDF Renewables and EDF Group International Division, EDF power solutions is an international energy player which develops, builds and operates renewable and low-carbon energy production facilities as well as flexible power and electricity transmission solutions.
As a major player in the energy transition worldwide, EDF power solutions deploys within EDF, competitive, responsible and value-creating projects. In 25 countries, our teams show their commitment to local stakeholders every day, adding their expertise and capacity for innovation to the fight against climate change.
EDF power solutions operates 31GW of gross-installed power capacity worldwide. Leveraging on its technological and commercial skills as well as local knowledge, EDF power solutions develops innovative offers to support the move towards decarbonisation and develop more efficient electrical systems.
EDF power solutions offers a large range of technologies to produce low-carbon electricity (wind power, solar, hydraulics, biomass), increase power-system flexibility (battery storage, PSP, low carbon thermal hybrid solution, etc) and reduce our customers’ carbon footprint (electrical mobility, hydrogen, offgrid solutions, mini grids, etc).
For more information visit: www.edf-powersolutions.com or https://southafrica.edf-powersolutions.com
Additional project information:
The Umoyilanga project combines solar, wind and battery storage technologies to offer dispatchable and reliable power to the national electrical grid. The project will operate as a virtual power plant, combining generation from two sites which are 900km apart, namely Avondale in the Northern Cape, with 115MW of solar PV and 30MW of battery storage, and Dassiesridge in the Eastern Cape, with 63MW of wind and 45MW of battery storage.
The unique combination of wind and solar resources with batteries enables Umoyilanga to provide 75MW on demand from 05:00 to 21:30 as per the requirements of the PPA and demonstrates that renewable energy can provide reliable, dispatchable power at a competitive price.
To achieve this, batteries at Dassiesridge will generally charge from the wind energy at night, discharging power in the morning until the sun rises. The solar installation at Avondale will supply the bulk of the energy during the day, supplemented by wind energy from Dassiesridge. Excess solar energy will be used to charge the batteries at Avondale, which will discharge after sunset. A sophisticated energy management system will give instructions to assets across both sites to optimise the power supply in real time in terms of the PPA, depending on weather forecasts.
