Enerthia Energy works across four offerings — Energy Consultancy, Business Development, Product & Service Endorsement, and Funding Origination. This briefing sits where they meet: a widening gap in South Africa’s firm power, and what it means if you’re weighing solar-plus-storage.
Installed coal capacity is scheduled to fall from about 40 GW today to 26 GW by 2035, while peak demand climbs from around 30 GW to 40 GW — leaving a firm-supply deficit of up to 14 GW by the mid-2030s. Gas was meant to help, with 11 GW of gas-to-power targeted by 2035, but it’s largely unsecured and supply-constrained. The gap will be filled mainly by renewables, firmed with batteries.
Storage is the mechanism. Solar is the cheapest power to build but it’s intermittent; a battery turns it into firm, dispatchable power that covers the evening peak. Yet the market is barely started — the region has fewer than 30 battery projects delivering a little over 50 MWh — while installed capacity across Africa could grow up to 700% between 2025 and 2030 (Rho Motion), with South Africa in the lead.
The template already exists: Naos-1, near Viljoenskroon in the Free State, pairs 300 MW of solar with a 660 MWh battery (SOLA Group, WBHO and Envision), designed for wheeling. One project against a 14 GW gap — the demand is structural and only starting to be met.
For offtakers, the question is whether to firm solar with storage while capacity is scarce; for EPCs, developers and funders, the pipeline ahead is large and largely unbuilt. Enerthia originates funding and lines up the right partners around a project — it does not fund from its own balance sheet and is not an EPC contractor.
Listen to the short briefing above, or explore our decks at enerthiaenergy.co.za/resources.