Page 13 - AfrElec Week 50 2022

BATTERIES
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Eskom starts construction of

battery energy storage facility

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa’s national power utility, Eskom, grid, and also to strengthen the grid by adding
and Hyosung Heavy Industries have started con- more storage and transforming capacity,” he
struction of the first energy storage facility under added.
Eskom’s flagship Battery Energy Storage System Elandskop is part of Phase 1 of Eskom’s BESS
(BESS) project, Engineering News reported on project, which includes the installation of some
December 8. 199MW additional capacity, with 833MWh of
The state-owned enterprise (SOE) in July distributed battery storage plants across eight
awarded contracts for BESS with a combined Eskom distribution substation sites. Phase 1 also
value of ZAR4.4bn ($251mn) to South Korean includes about 2MW of solar photovoltaic (PV)
manufacturer, Hyosung, and Chinese hi-tech capacity.
electrical engineering group, Pinggao. The pro- The total cost of the project will be about
ject will be delivered across several sites by the ZAR11bn and is being funded through con-
end of June 2023. cessional loans from the World Bank, African
Construction will take between seven and Development Bank and the New Development
twelve months and the batteries will be charged Bank, writes Engineering News.
from the main grid via SOE’s Elandskop substa- Phase 2 of the project includes the installation
tion, the group said. The sod-turning ceremony of a further 144MW of storage capacity, equiva-
for the first BESS was held on December 7 at the lent to 616MWh at four Eskom distribution sites
Elandskop site in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). and one transmission site. The solar PV capac-
According to Eskom, the facility will have ity in this phase will be 58MW. Phase 2 sites are
a capacity of 8MW, equivalent to 32MWh of planned to be commissioned by December 2024.
distributed electricity, enough to power a small The BESS project will use large-scale utility
town such as Howick for four hours. BESS will batteries with the capacity of 1,440 MWh per day
offer a benefit of boosting the supply during and a 60MW of PV capacity, said Engineering
peak hours, thereby reducing the strain on the News. It will be one of the largest energy storage
network. projects to be developed and implemented in
“The beginning of the construction of the South Africa.
Elandskop BESS is a positive development in our “Eskom has identified distributed storage
efforts to alleviate the pressure on the national as an alternative to support renewable energy
electricity grid,” said Eskom CEO, André de expansion in South Africa and we have taken the
Ruyter. necessary steps to ensure the successful imple-
“This is a direct response to the urgent need to mentation of the BESS project,” said Velaphi
address South Africa ‘s long-running electricity Ntuli, Eskom general manager: distribution,
crisis by adding more generation capacity to the operations enablement.™

Week 50 14•December•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P13