French energy supermajor TotalEnergies has inaugurated the largest hybrid renewable energy project in Africa — a facility in South Africa that will generate 400 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year.
Located in Northern Cape province, the Hydra Project combines a 216-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant with a 500 MWh battery energy storage system.
Developed and built with partners Hydra Storage Holding and Reatile Renewables, the facility will supply 75 MW of dispatchable renewable electricity to the national grid continuously between 5:00 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. under a 20-year power purchase agreement.
“We are delighted, together with our partners Reatile Renewables and Hydra Storage Holding, to bring the Hydra project into operation,” said Magali Pailhé, Managing Director of TotalEnergies Southern Africa.”It enables us to supply dispatchable renewable power to the South African grid, thereby strengthening the country’s energy security while decarbonizing its electricity generation.
This project reinforces our renewable production capacity in South Africa, the continent’s largest power market in terms of electricity consumption.”Hydra Storage Holding is a South African independent power producer that has delivered more than 1 GW of large and medium-scale renewable projects across the country.
With Hydra online, TotalEnergies now manages just under 36 GW of gross renewable power generation capacity worldwide.
Hydra is currently the largest combined renewables-plus-storage project on the continent, though its title may be short-lived. In March, Egypt signed a joint venture along the Red Sea coast with Orascom Construction, France’s Engie, and Japan’s Toyota Tsusho to build 6,000 MW of solar, wind and battery capacity.
Egypt is also home to the continent’s largest pure generation project — the 1.8 GW Benben Solar Park, which came online in 2019.
