| Construction
Left: Middle Kruisvllei upstream weir
Supporting the area Kruisvallei Hydro’s smaller scale facilitates a direct
line with local communities and supports their development. It has committed a percentage of its annual revenues to initiatives in the surrounding area towards education, housing and sustainable enterprise development initiatives for the project’s life-cycle.
Kruisvallei Hydro and Red Rocket support the local municipality’s vision to integrate the environmental, tourism, agriculture and economic sectors in developments that will create jobs and better opportunities for all residents. Playing a pivotal role in these rural communities, the project helps promote community-based projects, training and scholarships, micro-enterprises, the building and equipping of educational and health facilities, and infrastructure development. “Energy and local development go hand-in-hand in South Africa, which is why our integrated approach gives a great advantage,” says Red Rocket CEO Matteo Brambilla. “By being involved at every stage and the agility of deploying sub-100MW sites, we can build very close ties to local communities and leaders. And by maintaining a continual business presence throughout the construction and operation lifespan, we don’t build and run. We can stay as active participants in developing the surrounding region in the same collaborative spirit we use to deliver our projects.”
Rocketing towards the future Kruisvallei Hydro is the first demonstration of Red
Rocket’s integrated development business model and will soon be followed by more. Brambilla can reveal that there are at least three more projects in the immediate pipeline - two photovoltaic and one wind site of 5MW each - that will reach financial close by the end of 2021. Beyond that, Red Rocket has around 2.5 GW of
projects under development for the fifth round of IPP bidding, followed by another 3 GW in projects for future rounds. These are spread across solar and wind - reinforcing Red Rocket’s vision to provide sites across all types of renewable energy. As it builds its credibility as an EPC and IPP, Red Rocket has big ambitions, says Brambilla: “We want to establish ourselves as one of the
largest independent power producers on the continent. We are hoping to grow, develop and set up business everywhere on the continent, but for now, we’re focusing on South Africa where we have a well-developed market. We have developments in progress, especially on wind and solar, and we hope that all our efforts, strategy and financial engineering will be successful in the next round of South Africa’s renewable energy procurement programme. After that, we are already working on new developments for the following rounds in this country. Our objective is to reach two gigawatts of projects by 2025.” ●
More information For more information see
https://redrocket.energy/
Below left: Turbine shaft and wicket gate activators
Below middle: Trash rack cleaning machine
Below right: Active spilling gate
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