South Africa's Eskom Group kicked off construction of the country’s first energy storage facility at Msunduzi and Impendle municipalities in the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday.
The construction of the facility, which is going to be fulfilled under the Eskom Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project, should take between seven months and a year, according to the government-owned national power utility.
The capacity of the energy storage is expected to be about 8MW, equivalent to 32MWh of distributed electricity, which is sufficient to power a town such as Howick with its 22,000 population for at least four hours. It is set to be charged from the main grid via Eskom’s Elandskop substation.
“The beginning of the construction of the Elandskop BESS is a positive development in our efforts to alleviate the pressure on the national electricity grid,” said Eskom Chief Executive Andre de Ruyter. “This is a direct response to the urgent need to address South Africa’s long-running electricity crisis by adding more generation capacity to the grid, and also to strengthen the grid by adding more storage and transforming capacity.”
The facility is said to be part of the first phase of Eskom’s BESS project, which will see approximately 199MW additional capacity installed equivalent to 833MWh of distributed battery storage plants at eight Eskom Distribution substation sites across South Africa. The second phase of the project is planned to include 144MW of storage capacity, equivalent to 616MWh, set to be distributed through four substations and one transmission facility.
“Eskom has identified distributed storage as an alternative to support renewable energy expansion in South Africa and we have taken the necessary steps to ensure the successful implementation of the BESS project,” said the company’s General Manager Velaphi Ntuli.
Eskom, which produces approximately 95% of South Africa's electricity, said that the total capacity of the two-phase BESS project is expected to exceed 1,440MWh per day and a 60MW PV capacity, making it the largest BESS in the country. The first phase of the project is planned to be finished by the end of June 2023, while the second is projected to be accomplished by the end of 2024.