Heritage Cases

An Environmental Authorisation (EA) was issued for the construction of the 100 MW Mulilo De Aar Photovoltaic Energy Plant on the farm Badenhorst Dam on the Remainder of Portion 1 of the Farm De Aar No 180 in the Emthanjeni Municipality in De Aar, Northern Cape province. The approved site is 225 hectares in extent. The EA was issued to Mulilo De Aar PV (Pty) Ltd on 9 July 2012 with reference number 12/12/20/2499. The EA was subsequently amended as follows: • 12/12/20/2499AM1 on 28 September 2012 • 12/12/20/2499AM2 on 8 March 2013 • 12/12/20/2499AM3 on 15 April 2015 • 12/12/20/2499AM4 on 6 April 2017 • 12/12/20/2499AM5 on 9 July 2020 The EA is valid until 9 July 2022. The PV site was recently bid in the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy’s (DMRE) Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement (RMIPPP) programme as one of the facilities making up a larger, multi-facility project called “Mulilo Total Hydra Storage”. The applicant and EA holder, proposes to change the details of the EA holder from Mulilo De Aar PV (Pty) Ltd, to Mulilo Total Hydra Storage (Pty) Ltd , because it is a requirement of the RMIPP that ultimately all EA’s are in the name of the bidding project company. It is also proposed to amend the project description by adding an Auxiliary Generator Set (“GenSet”) with a maximum output of 9.99MW to the approved solar photovoltaic energy plant and this application is therefore for a Part 2 EA Amendment Application in terms of NEMA. The 9.99MW Aux GenSet will be situated within the approved footprint of the solar PV project that was assessed and approved as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process and authorised by the current EA.