Eskom's 6 GW Tender Signals the End of Pure Solar Procurement in Africa

Eskom launched a tender for six gigawatts of renewables-plus-storage, marking a decisive shift in how African utilities buy clean energy. South Africa's state power company is no longer accepting raw, intermittent solar or wind power onto its grid without dedicated battery capacity. This shift matters because it exposes the core bottleneck facing African power markets from Johannesburg to Lagos: clean energy generation without storage causes grid failure rather than solving it. For years, development finance institutions poured money into basic solar generation without funding