Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (REFIT) independent power producers
NamPower, the state utility, contracted 14 private renewable producers of 5 MW each under the REFIT programme, the first three were commissioned by June 2017, and in the year to June 2025 all 14 plants operated and supplied 183.2 GWh, 7.4 percent of the units Namibia put into its grid.
183.2 GWh, energy supplied by refit independent power producers, 2025. 7.4 % of units into system, refit share of total units into the system, 2025. NamPower, Integrated Annual Report 2025 (financial year to 30 June 2025), retrieved 2026-10-17.
The move, and what it needed
The Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Electricity Control Board and NamPower reserved 70 MW for small private renewable plants, licensed 14 producers at 5 MW each, and NamPower signed 25-year power purchase agreements at a set tariff, so private capital built generation the utility had not financed itself.
Preconditions
- A creditworthy single buyer able to sign long-term purchase agreements
- A regulator that issues generation licences to non-utility producers
- Solar resource strong enough for small plants to pay back at a fixed tariff
Limits: The figure is the state utility reporting on its own purchases, inside a 264-page PDF (page 104 carries the REFIT sentence, page 125 the 70 MW contracted capacity). The programme is small: 70 MW in a system with a maximum demand of 670 MW, and Namibia still imported 48 percent of its electricity in the same year, so the REFIT plants did not change the country's supply position. The share fell from 7.7 percent in 2024 to 7.4 percent in 2025, which the report attributes to no loss of plants. The programme was a fixed tariff paid to 14 licensees, not a competitive procurement, and the 5 MW cap per plant and the 30 percent previously disadvantaged ownership rule were policy choices whose cost the record does not show. The 2017 start year comes from a newspaper report of the first three commissionings, not from NamPower.