South Africa’s main utility Eskom – one of the biggest power suppliers in Africa – has built a battery system testing and demonstration facility to help with its plan to provide 2GW of storage for energy produced from renewable sources eventually.
The testing will begin in July. Located at the utility’s Research and Innovation Centre in Rosherville, Johannesburg, the project will compare different energy storage technologies and solutions available today and find the best approach for the local electricity network and climate.
The centre currently has a 250kW/1MWh BYD lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO 4) battery system deployed by local construction and property development company Afri-Devo, and another from General Electric, which uses similar batteries to those seen in Zebra EVs.
South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan of 2010 called for 18GW of renewable energy generation capacity. Barry MacColl, the general manager at Eskom’s research, testing and development, reckons this will require 2GW of “additional, daily balanced energy storage”.
He added: “The future need for energy storage is therefore clear, however the existing technologies are only at the beginning stages of commercial development.”