By David McDonald, CEO at SolarAfrica
For more than a decade, South Africa’s energy sector was stuck in a constant state of crisis. But come 2025, and we finally saw a real step change across the industry, as we started to move from firefighting to future-facing mode.
And while it’s not yet perfect – and it certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing – for those of us in the renewable energy space, it felt like watching a sector long stuck in neutral finally click into gear.
Here are five big power moves that this year brought us.
Power Move 1: SA moves towards a wholesale energy market
With the imminent introduction of the South African Wholesale Energy Market (SAWEM) in 2026, this year will be remembered as the year South Africa finally put real oomph behind electricity market reform. With SAWEM, South Africa will shift from a single-buyer system (Eskom controls everything) to a competitive and open electricity market – something we’ve been talking about for years, but are now finally moving on.
A few short weeks ago, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) approved the country’s first market operator licence – a precursor to the launch of SAWEM – which points to a future where multiple private players can trade and wheel power freely, like an “electricity stock exchange”.
This shift will ultimately set the scene for a wholesale market where generators can sell to multiple offtakers, and where licensed traders can compete on price and flexibility. This will unlock more private investment, more competition, lower prices – while for businesses, this heralds a new era of choice, where companies will have more agency than ever before when it comes to their energy mix.
Power Move 2: The Great Trading Licence Boom (but there’s still no playbook)
If 2024 was a trickle, 2025 was the watershed. Demand for electricity trading licences skyrocketed as companies rushed to secure their place in the emerging merchant market.
While this boom unfolded in parallel with rules that are still being defined, the lingering uncertainty did little to stop the momentum. The industry’s desire to dynamically buy and sell power has outpaced regulation, demonstrating how desperately the country’s C&I sector wants alternatives to the traditional model, which is solely reliant on the national grid. And it’s clear that once the final framework drops, we can expect market participation to climb even more aggressively.
Power Move 3: One-to-many generation becomes a reality
Traditionally, Independent Power Producers (IPPs) would sign one power purchase agreement (PPA) with one customer, known as a “one-to-one” model. However, we saw a major milestone that changed the South African energy sector in 2025: a single utility-scale solar farm saw its power come online, enabling the wheeling of energy to multiple corporate customers simultaneously in a “one-to-many” generation model.
And while this Free State-based solar farm drew the headlines, the significance is far greater: South Africa now has proof of concept that large-scale private generation can serve a wide group of offtakers, through a shared asset model.
SolarAfrica, through its SunCentral project located between De Aar and Hanover and which boasts a total 1GW capacity, is an example of another developer that will cater to this aggregated offtake environment, with its power expected to come online in early 2026. Expect many others to follow suit.
Power Move 4: Private capital enters the group chat
Perhaps one of the biggest power moves of 2025 pertained to an announcement at this year’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), which would see government finally allow private sector participation in transmission infrastructure. This includes third-party funded transmission lines, private grid expansion (with Eskom oversight) and cost-sharing models between IPPs and the state-owned entity.
The significance of this is that it allows private sector to co-fund and co-develop sections of South Africa’s transmission network, helping expand capacity by alleviating the bottlenecks created by Eskom’s grid constraints; bottlenecks that throttle the roll-out of renewable power.
Power Move 5: Corporate SA goes all in on renewables
If there was any lingering doubt about whether corporates were ready to embrace renewables at scale, 2025 settled it.
Heavy energy users – from mining and automotive to manufacturing and agriculture – signed some of the largest renewable PPAs in the country’s history, many of them under wheeling structures. While driven, in part, by sustainability concerns such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), affordability is also a key reason behind this growth, with tariffs continuing to climb.
This collective move has strengthened the case for utility-scale private generation and sped up demand for flexible wheeling solutions; areas where we at SolarAfrica have personally seen increased interest from businesses seeking stability over the coming years.
One thing’s for sure: if this was the year the gears finally clicked into place, 2026 is when the industry really picks up speed. Buckle up.
About SolarAfrica
Founded in 2011, SolarAfrica provides a suite of capex-free green energy solutions to the commercial and industrial sectors in Southern Africa. The holistic suite includes on-site solutions such as solar energy and battery storage together with virtual solutions like wheeling, trading and aggregation.
SolarAfrica partners with businesses in South Africa seeking an energy solution that provides power security, cost savings and carbon reduction – building towards long-term sustainability.
The company has evolved into an ambitious team who are passionate about what they do and the core values they uphold. SolarAfrica has been named the continent’s leading solar energy firm twice, scooping the Africa Solar Industry Association’s African Solar Company of the Year award in 2021 and 2023.
