Zamani Saul, Premier of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, stated that the Redstone Concentrated Solar Power Project (the Redstone CSP) in the town of Posmasburg is schedule for completion in 2023. He made the announcement at a government meeting held on February 24. The Redstone CSP, which is one of the largest investment projects in the province, will be built over a period of 31 months and enter commercial operation by October next year. This story was first reported by South African news outlets.
Saudi Arabia’s renewable energy developer ACWA Power and US-based SolarReserve have been the main developers of the Redstone CSP. The construction phase was supposed to commence in 2016. However, South Africa’s public utility company Eskom delayed the arrangement of the PPA to 2018, and the financial close for the project was not arranged until May 2021.
In terms of specifications, the Redstone CSP is a 100MW concentrated solar power plant featuring molten salt energy storage. It can store thermal energy for up to 12 hours and output around 480GWh of electricity per year. This amount of power is enough to support more than 200,000 homes during the peak demand periods.
Premier Saul noted that as of this January, 636 people have been directly employed to work at the plant site. Of that total, 91% are South Africans. It is estimated that a peak of almost 1,800 people will be directly employed to work on the project by the end of this year. The total investment in the project amounts to ZAR 11.6 billion (around USD 769 million). The African Development Bank is the lead arranger for the financing of the project.