Eskom Green has begun construction on a 75MW solar power plant at its Lethabo power station in the Free State – the first utility-scale renewable plant to be built on the footprint of an existing Eskom coal-fired station, and the start of a much larger pipeline the utility says will add 6GW of new capacity by 2030.
Construction on the R1.2-billion plant began on Wednesday at a ceremony attended by energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Eskom board chairman Mteto Nyati and group CEO Dan Marokane, among others. Once completed, the plant is expected to generate roughly 147GWh a year, enough to supply about 60 000 households.
The Lethabo plant is the first concrete delivery on Eskom Green’s strategy of building renewables on the footprint of existing coal stations – using established grid connections, transmission infrastructure and operational staff to accelerate deployment.
Lethabo is one of 17 high-priority projects to be built across 11 Eskom coal-station sites, the others being Arnot, Duvha, Majuba, Tutuka, Komati, Kendal, Kusile, Hendrina, Camden and Grootvlei. Construction across the pipeline is expected to start between now and 2028, with the projects collectively delivering about 6GW of new capacity by 2030.
Eskom said the initial pipeline will be funded on-balance sheet, in line with the conditions of its national treasury debt relief package, without reliance on additional project finance borrowing. Beyond that, Eskom Green will turn to project finance structures using special purpose vehicles, alongside partnerships, co-development opportunities and acquisitions of late-stage projects on third-party land. The utility is now publicly committing to a pipeline of more than 32GW of renewable energy and storage projects by 2040.
A start
“Now that we have delivered a stable electricity platform for the South African economy to grow from, we can seamlessly enable the integration of renewable energy sources as required by the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan to maintain future energy security,” Marokane said in a statement.
Read: Eskom must build renewables or face extinction: Mteto Nyati
The gap between today’s construction start – a single 75MW project – and the 32GW the utility is now promising by 2040 is roughly 425-fold. Eskom has a long history of missing major build deadlines, and its own statement notes that construction on some of the initial 17 projects may not start for another two years. The Lethabo plant nonetheless marks the first time the utility has put a renewable shovel in the ground on its own coal footprint. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media