Jua Renewables · Agriculture
Jua Renewables funds, builds, owns, insures and operates solar and AI-optimised battery storage on commercial farms and agro-processing sites. You contribute no capital and carry no performance risk. You buy the electricity the system makes, under a twenty-five year agreement, at a blended tariff below your grid rate — escalating on a contracted schedule set below expected grid inflation, so you can put a defensible energy line into a ten-year budget.
The problem
Eskom direct customers absorbed a 12.74% increase in April 2025 and a further 8.76% in April 2026; municipal customers, 9.01% from July. Three determinations in two years — and a restructuring that pushes more of the bill into fixed charges you pay whether you draw power or not.
Refrigeration, packing and irrigation run straight through the evening peak — now a three-hour window where the Ruraflex high-demand rate runs to around R8.24 per kWh. Energy cannot be deferred or substituted, and there is no forward market in which to hedge it, as there is for fuel or fertiliser.
A Jua power purchase agreement escalates on a contracted schedule, set below expected grid inflation — a number you can budget against, not a NERSA decision published every March. The chart shows what that difference does over the life of a contract: the shaded area is the saving, and it widens every year.
Illustrative. Both series indexed to 1.0 in year one, so the comparison holds whatever tariff a given site pays today. Utility escalation held at the 8.76% approved by NERSA for Eskom direct customers from April 2026; the Jua curve illustrates a contracted schedule set below expected grid inflation — your escalation is fixed in the agreement itself. Actual utility increases are set annually by the regulator.
The model
Jua designs, funds, builds, owns and operates the plant on your farm. You sign one power purchase agreement and pay per unit consumed. Because Jua owns the asset, Jua carries the depreciation, the insurance, the spares and the replacement risk — your obligation is the monthly invoice for energy actually delivered. The whole ask, to begin, is twelve months of your electricity bills.
Send twelve months of consumption data and tariff bills. We model your baseline and produce an indicative tariff and savings estimate within two weeks.
No cost · no obligationA technical visit to the farm, with logging meters deployed where half-hourly data is unavailable, and a review of roof area, land and the grid connection.
Handled entirely by JuaPreliminary engineering design, solar and storage sizing against your actual load profile, and a firm commercial tariff offer in writing.
A number you can budget againstThe power purchase agreement is finalised and signed, and Jua runs the full embedded-generation process on your behalf — the municipal or Eskom application, budget quote and grid connection permission, designed and professionally certified to NRS 097-2, SANS 10142-1 and the grid code.
The paperwork is ours, not yoursConstruction and commissioning timed around your harvest, not through it. Then monitoring, maintenance and contractually guaranteed output for the full term — one counterparty, one number to call.
Commercial operation onwardRegulatory position: below 100 MW no generation licence is required under the Schedule 2 exemption (registration applies above 100 kW); installations under 1 MVA are treated as small-scale embedded generation; systems are sized to serve your own load as a net consumer.
Risk allocation
Everything that can go wrong with the system is ours to fix.
This is the distinction between buying a solar installation and contracting for power. An owned system transfers a set of twenty-five year obligations onto a farming balance sheet. A power purchase agreement leaves them where they belong.
Carried by Jua and its funders. Nothing is drawn from your facilities, and nothing appears as capital expenditure on your accounts.
Carried by Jua. If the system generates less than modelled, that is our revenue shortfall, not your problem.
Carried by Jua for the full term — monitoring, cleaning, servicing, fault response and spares.
Carried by Jua. Construction all-risks, property damage and business interruption cover are in place throughout.
Carried by Jua. Inverter and battery replacement in the second decade is funded from a reserve, not from a call on you.
Carried by Jua. We hold the mandate, make the applications and answer to the utility.
The agreement
The commercial terms are standard across the programme and set out here rather than kept behind a sales process. The tariff itself is set from your own metered data — never from a brochure.
The Jua band is an indicative pre-assessment range; your tariff is confirmed against twelve months of your own metered data before any offer is made. Eskom figures per the Ruraflex Gen 2026/27 schedule and tariff booklet.
| Term | Standard position |
|---|---|
| Term | Twenty to twenty-five years from the commercial operation date; typically twenty-five. |
| Blended tariff | R2.08 – R2.40 per kWh — a fully inclusive 24/7 rate. Storage, operations, maintenance, insurance and monitoring all sit inside the number. |
| Escalation | A contracted annual escalation set below expected grid inflation — a schedule you can budget against, not a determination published every March. |
| Guaranteed output | Generation and uptime are contractually guaranteed, and measured against metered data rather than estimates. |
| Minimum offtake | An agreed annual volume you purchase or pay for. It is set below your assessed consumption, so it is a floor, not a stretch. |
| Capital contribution | Nil. Jua funds one hundred per cent of the system. |
| Hybrid supply | Your Eskom or municipal connection stays in place for flexibility and backup, and existing diesel or hydro is integrated. Nothing is taken away. |
| Land | A registered lease or servitude over the installation area for the contract term. No transfer of land, and no change to your title. |
| Surplus energy | Jua may sell surplus generation to the grid or to third parties, subject to regulatory approval. Your supply is served first. |
| Environmental attributes | Carbon credits arising from the system are retained by Jua unless separately agreed. |
| Confidentiality | Mutual, and POPIA-compliant. Your consumption data, financials and tariffs are not disclosed. |
Indicative standard terms. The tariff, escalation and minimum offtake for any given site are determined by the assessment in step 01 and recorded in the agreement itself.
The system
Solar makes the cheapest energy on the farm; an AI-driven battery stores the midday surplus and dispatches it into the evening peak. The controller decides, second by second, where your next kilowatt-hour should come from — solar, battery, grid, or your existing diesel and hydro backup, which stays integrated and runs far less often.
When the grid drops, compressors, cold rooms and sorting lines do not notice. Cold chain rides through the outage — a defensible record for insurers and export auditors.
Direct solar meets about 57% of site consumption. With storage dispatching into evenings and peaks, total supply reaches 75% to 95%.
Lithium iron phosphate cells at 100% depth of discharge, rated for 10 000 cycles. The rated capacity is the capacity you actually use — no reserve you pay for but cannot touch.
Sealed against dust and rain, rated −20 °C to 55 °C, quiet enough to sit beside the packhouse. No cooled container required.
Storage scales from a single stack to 960 kWh in parallel, so the plant is sized to your load profile and can be expanded in later seasons without replacing what is already installed. The system learns your site's rhythm, plans each day's charge and discharge against the weather forecast and the time-of-use clock, and is monitored around the clock by Jua's operations team. You receive a monthly statement of energy delivered, savings achieved and availability — never an alarm.
Delivered
A working Jua installation on a Western Cape fruit farm — the same design language we propose for your site. Ground-mount rows sited on unproductive land between established orchard blocks, with not one planted hectare sacrificed.
Photography: Jua Renewables, delivered Western Cape installation. We arrange site visits for prospective offtakers — walk the rows and open the plant-room door before you sign anything.
Who it suits
The model works best where consumption is substantial, daytime-weighted, and tied to equipment that cannot simply be switched off.
Neighbouring farms assessed together improve pricing and shorten the approval queue — we can run a district or a valley as one programme.
Enquiries
Send twelve months of bills and we do the rest: an indicative tariff and savings estimate within two weeks, at no cost and with no obligation.