State-owned electricity group Eskom has awarded technology group Siemens the contract to supply 46 wind turbines to its 100 MW Sere wind farm project, which is being developed on a 3 700 ha site near Vredendal in the Western Cape.

The R2.4-billion renewable-energy project is scheduled to begin feeding electricity into the grid by the first half of 2014.

It is understood that the turbine contract comprises about 65% of the project’s total capital expenditure, with the other main contract being for the supply, installation and commissioning of a 132 kV transmission line and a substation, which will be located in close proximity to the project site.

Sere is receiving some of its funding from the World Bank’s $3.75-billion Eskom Investment Support Project, approved in 2010 primarily to support the Medupi coal-fired power station. Additional funding has been secured from the African Development Bank (AfDB), French development agency Agence Française de Développement (AfD), and the Clean Technology Fund.

In total, the World Bank component comprises 32.4% of the overall funding plan for Sere, which is situated about 300 km north of Cape Town. The AfD component, meanwhile, is 36.7%, while the AfDB component comprises 26.8%. The development costs are being carried by Eskom.

Sere, which takes its name from the Nama word for ‘cool breeze’, is the coal-heavy group’s first utility-scale wind farm and Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba has reported that it will save an estimated 252 603 t/y of carbon emissions.

Director of the Siemens Wind Power Division for Africa and the Middle East, Tom Pedersen, says installation is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2013 and that the contract includes the supply of turbines, as wells as electrical and civil engineering and a five-year service agreement.

Each turbine has a height of 115 m, a rotor diameter of 108 m and a power output of 2.3 MW.

The turbine order was the second for Siemens in South Africa, with the first having been awarded by the developers of the 138 MW Jeffreys Bay wind farm.

The Eastern Cape wind project secured a power purchase agreement following the first bidding round under South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. Mainstream Renewable Power, Globeleq, Thebe Investments, Enzani and Usizo are currently constructing the project.