South Africa Opens Partner Prequalification for 1.5GW Tubatse Pumped Storage Scheme, Its Largest Ever
JOHANNESBURG — Eskom Green, the renewables arm of South Africa's state utility Eskom, has issued a request for qualifications (RFQ No. E3611GXR) to select a strategic partner for the development, financing and delivery of the Tubatse pumped storage scheme, according to an Eskom statement dated October 13. The prequalification is the first stage of the procurement process, and qualifying bidders will advance to a request-for-proposals (RFP) stage.
The project is located near Roossenekal in Limpopo province, within the Elias Motsoaledi Local Municipality, and relies on the De Hoop Dam as its water source. It is planned at 1.5 gigawatts, with four reversible pump-turbine units of 375 megawatts each and energy storage of about 21 gigawatt-hours — enough for roughly 14 hours of generation at full output. Once completed, it would overtake the operating Ingula pumped storage station (1,332 megawatts) as South Africa's largest pumped storage plant.
Eskom said the project is to be structured as a public-private partnership housed in a separate special-purpose vehicle; the land has been secured and environmental authorisation is in place. Tubatse forms part of South Africa's Just Energy Transition programme and has been designated a Strategic Integrated Project (SIP 20d) by Infrastructure South Africa.
The scheme has been decades in the making. It was renamed Tubatse in 2007, with capacity raised to 1.5 GW; it was shelved in 2009; and in November 2024 the French Development Agency signed a €6.5 million grant to support early-stage development. Pumped storage uses the elevation difference between upper and lower reservoirs — pumping water uphill when electricity is plentiful and releasing it through turbines at peak demand — and is a key long-duration storage technology for integrating wind and solar power into the grid. (Sources: Eskom statement, October 13; Business Day, October 14)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Tubatse 项目水源 De Hoop 水库（林波波省 Steelpoort 河）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，JMK 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0 授权
