A Free State commercial farming operation Belle Rive, spanning more than 2 000 ha, has appointed solar energy company RenEnergy Africa as its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor to design and deliver what will become one of South Africa’s largest offgrid agricultural solar-plus-storage systems.
The installation – a ground-mounted 4.89 MW solar PV array paired with a 20 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) – is under construction. Once complete, the system will distribute power across the farming site through about 17 km of medium-voltage (MV) reticulation.
RenEnergy says the 20 MWh BESS at Belle Rive is, based on available market data and supplier intelligence, the largest privately contracted, purpose-built BESS deployed in service of an offgrid agricultural operation in South Africa.
The company has referred to nonprofit organisation GreenCape’s 2025 Market Intelligence Report, which highlights that the entire behind-the-meter storage market for the commercial, industrial and agricultural (CI&A) sectors in South Africa is expected to stabilise at about 400 MWh/y of new installations.
RenEnergy says a single privately contracted agricultural installation of 20 MWh therefore represents 5% of yearly national CI&A storage deployment.
