The bottlenecks in South Africa’s national transmission grid, referred to as gridlock, are a major concern for the country’s wind power sector. This was highlighted during a panel discussion on the first day (Wednesday) of the Windaba 2025 conference, being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. Gridlock is hampering the connection of new renewable-energy sources to the grid.

“The grid is a massively important issue,” affirmed South African renewable-energy company Anthem CEO James Cumming. He expects to see another period in which renewable-energy generators will have to wait for the grid to get the capacity to accommodate them, before they will be able to connect with it. He urges renewable energy and the other relevant entities to work together to create combined grid applications that have sufficient scale to make a grid connection credible.

“Gridlock is a global issue,” noted German multinational renewable-energy group ib vogt South Africa MD Mercia Grimbeek. “It’s not a particularly South African issue.”

“I think we need collaboration with government and with the people making policy; they need to understand the private electricity market,” said South African renewable-energy company Seriti Green CEO Peter Venn. He affirmed that the last Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) cycle that had been good for the wind sector had been REIPPPP 3. (The latest REIPPPP cycle is REIPPPP 7.)

Since REIPPPP 3, the programme had “done nothing” for wind power, he asserted. Rules had to be set for the entire wind sector – the independent power producers, “private” producers (such as industrial sites, or shopping malls, generating power for their own use), Eskom, and everyone else involved in the sector. And the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa has to be capacitated to help with this.

South African investment holding company Reatile Group chief commercial officer Sunette Smith acknowledged that REIPPPP 3 and REIPPPP 4 had created space for the wind industry. However, she pointed out, all wind power projects in South Africa faced the same challenges. The problems were known; what was needed was solutions. And, in her opinion, a key solution would be “policy change”. (She did not specify what form the change should take.)