Newly appointed Nordex Energy South Africa MD Robert Timmers says that South Africa is poised to be one of the multinational’s largest markets outside of North America and Europe in 2025. This, despite recent public procurement disappointments arising from the country’s well-documented grid constraints and delays in the introduction of new curtailment rules.

In an interview with Engineering News, Timmers indicated that the demand gap left by the last two Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPPP) bidding rounds was currently being partially closed for Nordex by two large private projects in the Eastern Cape, with a combined capacity of 631 MW.

Once completed over the coming 12 months, these projects will increase the original equipment manufacturer’s domestic operational fleet to about 1.7 GW and consolidate the group’s market share at above 30%.

South Africa would still represent but a modest part of the 50 GW of capacity installed globally by Nordex over its 40 years of existence, a milestone that the Hamburg, Germany, headquartered company is also marking this year.

Nevertheless, Timmers says South Africa has long been identified as an important growth market. A prospect that has also motivated his return to the country, following an eight-year leadership spell in Australia, where he oversaw Nordex’s delivery of increasingly large and complex projects, including the nearly 1 GW MacIntyre Wind Farm, regarded as the largest in the southern hemisphere.

Prior to his Australia posting, Timmers joined Nordex Energy South Africa from Deloitte, having earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting and Bachelor of Business Science in Accounting and Finance from the University of Cape Town, and worked on the Gouda wind project, in the Western Cape.

While South Africa’s immediate wind market outlook is overshadowed by grid-access uncertainty, Timmers is cautiously optimistic that initiatives under way to help unlock the grid alongside technology innovations will restore wind’s central role in South Africa’s unfolding energy transition.

There is still a possibility, he notes, that some wind projects submitted during Bid Window Seven of the REIPPPP could advance once value-for-money discussions are concluded, while several private projects could also enter construction in the not-too-distant future.

LOW-WIND SOLUTIONS

There are also technology solutions that will improve the competitiveness of projects in grid-ready regions such as Mpumalanga, where the wind resource is less potent than is the case in the Eastern, Northern and Western Cape provinces, where most wind projects have hitherto been developed.

Nordex itself has solutions in its portfolio, and which it is deploying in countries such as Germany, which have larger, more efficient rotors, higher towers and higher yields in low-wind areas, including the N175 turbine design that has a 6.8 MW capacity, towers with up to a 179 m hub height and a 175 m rotor diameter.

These technologies have been developed partly because of the fact that access to the grid is a constraint in the most optimum wind locations that is not limited to South Africa and wind projects are, thus, increasingly having to be built using technologies that are able to ensure that projects in lower wind-resource areas have an acceptable internal rate of return.

That said, Timmers does express doubts that the domestic market will ramp-up to match the recently remodelled draft Integrated Resource Plan, which anticipates more than 7.2 GW of wind being installed before 2030 due to these grid constraints.

Instead, the company is assuming that the yearly market can grow to a steady 1 GW, with the recent high tariffs bid under REIPPPP likely to moderate to competitive levels once short and medium-term solutions are found to the grid constraint, and as more efficient wind turbines are introduced.

Wind’s production profile, particularly during South Africa’s evening peak, will also continue to make it attractive even relative to hybrid solar PV/battery projects, but Timmers believes wind/PV/battery hybrid projects will also become a feature of the electricity supply landscape in future.

LOCAL CONTENT

Should the market increase to a yearly level of 1 GW, Nordex is also confident that higher levels of localisation will become feasible.

In several projects, Nordex Energy South Africa has moved to increase local content by integrating its concrete-tower design, which involves establishing concrete manufacturing and assembly operations in close proximity to the project site.

One of Nordex’s two current Eastern Cape projects has incorporated concrete towers and the contractor manufacturing the concrete sections on behalf of the group is currently employing over 250 people.

Using concrete instead of steel towers is a project-specific decision, though, and depends largely on the availability of materials, water and skills in the area in which the wind farm is being developed.

At a yearly tempo of 1 GW, Timmers says more components will be localised, including cables, staircases and anchor cages.

For larger components such as blades, steel towers and nacelles to be produced locally, the industry would require certainty of even higher levels of consistent demand, with Timmers underlining the damage that stop-start procurement has done to localisation previously.

Even at a 1 GW yearly tempo, however, the local industry could experience supply-chain pinch points, particularly in relation to skills, port infrastructure, crane and transport equipment, and in securing the permits and police escorts required to transport the abnormal loads.

Should there be consistent demand, however, Timmers is confident their constraints will be overcome by the industry as a whole, which is already investing in training.

Likewise, Nordex is expanding its own workforce, which has increased to over 150 people in recent months to support the projects under way and to prepare for future projects.

“With wind projects globally increasing in size and complexity, I see an opportunity to leverage the experience gained in our Australian projects, where project-specific optimisations dramatically increased value for customers,” he concludes.