Installed solar PV capacity
10.12 GW
South Africa passed the 10 GW mark, growing 19% year on year.
SAPVIA 2025/26 annual reporting period
Source: SAPVIAStatistics
South African solar statistics
The numbers that describe South Africa's solar market, each one traced to a primary source and dated. Free to quote and reuse with attribution.
Solar statistics for South Africa are scattered across NERSA decisions, CSIR reports, StatsSA releases and industry association announcements — most of them PDFs. This page collects the figures that actually get asked about, with the source for each so you can check the working or cite it directly.
Rooftop and embedded PV
6.8 GW
Distributed rooftop and embedded generation, excluding utility-scale IPP projects — roughly two thirds of all installed PV.
To 30 June 2025
Source: CSIRRenewables share of generation
9.0%
19,408 GWh of South Africa’s electricity generation came from renewable sources.
Calendar year 2024
Source: Statistics South AfricaMunicipalities with feed-in tariffs
43 (26%)
Only 43 municipal electricity distributors — about 26% — had approved embedded-generation tariffs, which is why selling power back is possible in some towns and not others.
SALGA 2023 status, cited in GreenCape 2025
Source: GreenCape / SALGALoad-shedding in the past year
26 hours
Across 4 days in FY2025/26, down from 175 hours across 13 days the previous year — a sharp improvement, though tariffs kept climbing regardless.
FY2025/26 vs FY2024/25
Source: EskomLatest approved tariff increase
8.76%
Eskom-direct customers, 2026/27, effective 1 April 2026. Municipal customers: 9.01% from 1 July 2026.
Reading the numbers
What these figures actually tell you
Rooftop is most of the market
Of the country's installed PV, the majority is distributed rooftop and embedded generation rather than utility-scale farms. South Africa's solar build-out has been driven substantially by households and businesses solving their own supply problem, not only by national procurement.
Feed-in depends on your municipality
Roughly a quarter of municipal distributors had approved embedded-generation tariffs. Whether you can be credited for surplus power is therefore a question about your municipality, not about your system — which is why national advice on feed-in is so often wrong locally.
How SSEG registration worksLoad-shedding eased; costs did not
Load-shedding fell sharply year on year, but approved tariff increases continued. The case for solar has been shifting from keeping the lights on toward controlling what power costs — a slower, less dramatic problem that does not go away between crises.
Renewables are still a small share
Despite rapid growth, renewables remain a single-digit percentage of total generation. The rooftop boom is significant for the households in it and still modest against the national picture.
Each figure links to the primary source it was taken from. Reporting periods differ between sources, so figures on this page are not all measured over the same window — the period is stated on every card. Last checked against source documents on 3 September 2026.
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Figures, charts and calculator outputs on this page may be reproduced, in whole or in part, with clear attribution and a link to https://www.solarguide.co.za/solar-statistics-south-africa/. Last reviewed 3 September 2026. If you need a specific cut of the underlying assumptions for a story, email [email protected].
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