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Washington - Tesla Motors' chief technology officer, JB Straubel, says South Africa can be a “huge market” for battery storage as rolling blackouts cut power in the continent’s most-industrialised economy.
The country has “such a mismatch between demand and supply,” said Straubel, also Tesla co-founder, at a US Energy Information Administration energy conference.
“South Africa actually has an electric grid that has huge implications for storage.”
Stifling factory production
Power utility Eskom, which provides about 95% of the country’s power, delayed investing in new generation capacity and is struggling to maintain its existing fleet of power stations.
The utility regularly rotates controlled blackouts in areas for a few hours to keep the national grid from collapse, stifling factory production and limiting a recovery in the economy.
South Africa is “a huge market for storage, where we can both effect resiliency, as well as backup and also help expand the infrastructure to do more,” Straubel said.
Founded in 2003, Tesla - the smallest and youngest publicly held US automaker - is investing heavily in growth as it prepares to begin selling the Model X, a cross-over SUV, this year. California-based Tesla is increasing production, building its battery factory east of Reno, Nevada and diversifying beyond cars, with a suite of battery products for homes, businesses and utilities.
Cost prohibitive
Tesla is shipping its Powerwall battery system at a retail price of $350 (about R4 360) per kilowatt-hour, Straubel said. That may fall to $100 to $150 by the end of the decade as the costs of manufacturing the batteries decline, just as they have in the solar market, he said.
The batteries would remain cost prohibitive to most South Africans, where gross domestic product per capita is $6 483 versus $54 597 in the US, according to International Monetary Fund statistics.
Generation from the country’s growing renewable energy sources can depend on weather conditions.
South Africa’s programme for independent power producers of renewable generation including photovoltaic, wind and hydro has procured over 6 000 megawatts through four bidding rounds since 2011, adding R193bn (about $15.5 billion) of investment in the sector.
