By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eskom has taken a monumental step in addressing the country’s electricity crisis by launching the Hex Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Worcester, Western Cape.
The group officially opened the Hex BESS site at Worcester in the Western Cape on Thursday (9 November), which is the first project to be completed under Eskom’s flagship BESS project announced in July 2022.
The project has specifically been developed to help alleviate the pressure on the national electricity grid, and resolve the ongoing electricity crisis, it said.
The project will add more storage capacity to strengthen the grid while diversifying the existing generation energy mix.
It uses large-scale utility batteries with a total capacity of 1,440MWh per day and a 60MW PV capacity, Eskom said.
“The Hex site is specifically designed to store 100MWh of energy, enough to power a town such as Mossel Bay or Howick for about five hours. It forms part of Phase 1 of Eskom’s BESS project, which includes the installation of approximately 833MWh additional storage capacity at eight Eskom Distribution substation sites in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape.
“This phase also includes about 2MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity,” it said.
Upon completion of the first Phase, Eskom will implement Phase 2 of the project, which includes the installation of a further 144MW of storage capacity, equivalent to 616MWh, at four Eskom Distribution sites and one Transmission site.
The solar PV capacity in this phase will be 58MW.
“The rollout of these technologies together with a disciplined execution of our Generation Recovery Plan which started in March 2023, and aimed at achieving energy availability factor of 70% by end March 2025, will give the country the most needed megawatts to address capacity constraints, “Eskom said.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, said these kinds of projects create hope that sooner rather than later, South Africa is going to overcome the challenge of load shedding.
“If we do more of these kinds of projects in other parts of the country, which is what Eskom intends to do, we will see the end of load shedding pretty soon. Today, after a few hiccups, you see in live form, the launch of this BESS project right in front of us. It is a great achievement for Eskom and the country.
“Eskom is demonstrating that it can have a sense of urgency, it can have an important quality that we all need in South Africa and elsewhere – which is the ability to innovate and create new ways of doing things. And not just think about them, but concretely deliver them. That is the key,” the Minister said.
BESS is a giant step in the right direction to support the Just Energy Transition (JET) programme for boosting green energy as a renewable alternative source. As renewable energy begins to grow, so does the demand for the installation of Battery Energy Storage Systems.
The Hex battery storage project is the first part of Eskom’s Battery Energy Storage System rollout scheduled for construction in the Western Cape. Northern Cape, Easter Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Meanwhile Eskom says that it will suspend load shedding this weekend thanks to lower demand.
Due to the anticipated lower weekend electricity demand and adequate emergency reserves, Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 16h00 on Friday until 05h00 on Saturday, as previously communicated.
Thereafter, load shedding will be suspended until 16:00 on Monday (13 November). An update on the outlook for the next week will be announced on Sunday.