Two ambitious young entrepreneurs are preparing to build a series of wind-energy projects across South Africa, at sites identified with the country’s latest and most accurate “wind atlas”.

This week their company, G7 Renewable Energies, published newspaper advertisements requesting public comment on five proposed wind farms in the Western and Northern Cape.

These would be the first of a new generation of wind-power plants, and could make a major contribution to a growing renewable energy industry. They would precede several larger projects that G7 hopes to build, some producing up to 750MW of power.

The wind atlas was the PhD project of scientist and entrepreneur Killian Hagemann, who with Nicolas Rolland, a businessman and environmentalist, united their expertise to form G7 Renewable Energies.

Hagemann’s says there is enough wind in South Africa to provide an unexpected 35% of South Africa’s electricity. His calculations, done in 2008, were based on electricity demand in 2007.