The Solar Blueprint: Supporting Municipalities and New Developments

When a new development can’t yet use all its solar power & municipal regulations limit long-term PPAs – what’s the solution?

You structure your PPA to serve both.☀️

SPS, in partnership with Darling Green Country Estate, Swartland Municipality, and Touchpoint Energy, has delivered a first-of-its-kind 1MW solar plant supplying clean energy to both a developing residential estate and the local municipality.

🚧The challenge:

Under the current Municipal Financial Management Act (MFMA), municipalities generally can’t sign PPAs longer than 3 years unless they go through a detailed and often cumbersome public approval process.

New residential estates take time to fully develop; therefore, building a full renewable solution from day 1 is difficult unless that surplus energy can be used elsewhere.

💡Here’s how we solved it for Darling Green Country Estate:

We structured the project so that the solar PV plant provides energy to the estate first, with surplus energy sold to Swartland Municipality during the initial 3-year period, creating value for both parties.

By the end of that period, the estate is projected to fully consume the energy output itself.

And that’s just the beginning. A 5MW solar farm is in development, set to wheel clean energy across the Eskom grid by mid-2026.

This is what agility, partnership, and real-world innovation look like in South Africa’s evolving energy landscape.