Opportunity Issue 106

BATTERY STORAGE
phase, and when complemented by wind and solar projects, will
provide baseload energy.
Solutions
Lithium and vanadium are two preferred solutions for new-generation
batteries. Australia, Chile and China are the world’s top producers of
lithium, with Argentina and Brazil making up the top five.
South Africa is in third place in terms of vanadium production,
but China makes more than twice as much as South Africa and the
second and fourth-placed Russia and Brazil combined.
Marula Mining has a new project in the Northern Cape mining
lithium and Bushveld Minerals in Limpopo describes itself as
being “one of only three operating primary vanadium producers”
in the world. Glencore is the other South African company that
mines vanadium.
But Bushveld Minerals has gone beyond mining. Its subsidiary,
Bushveld Energy, is to produce vanadium battery electrolyte at its
new Belco facility in East London. The aim is ultimately to produce
battery systems. The plant was built with the support of the Industrial
Development Corporation (IDC), which is well placed to assist in the
creation of a value chain for vanadium batteries in South Africa. If
Bushveld Energy reaches its target of eight-million litres, it will be the
largest plant of its kind outside of China.
A perfect storm
According to the South African manager of the new factory assembling
lithium-ion batteries in Cape Town, Etienne Grobler, conditions right
now represent a “perfect storm for energy storage”.
Grobler joined Swedish company Polarium to make a meaningful
difference by manufacturing “high-quality, sustainable energy
projects in South Africa, for South Africa”. He has previously worked
on fuel-cell and flow-battery solutions.
Polarium spent $30-million setting up the plant and intends
expanding quickly. The biggest customer for Polarium’s batteries
in Africa is the American Tower Corp, which sets up and maintains
telecommunications towers across the continent. In South Africa the
12.6kWh battery sells well and customers include shopping malls
and hotels.
By using nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) technology, the
lifecycle of the manufactured batteries is effectively doubled and
they are recyclable, a fact which will assist Polarium as it aims for
net-zero status for the factory by 2030. The factory is in Marconi Beam
industrial area near Milnerton in Cape Town.
A model of hybrid power generation. Credit: Yellow Door Energy
Arguing that the previous decade was about solar, the
company’s Country Director: South Africa, Mohamed Madhi, said,
“The decade of the battery has arrived!” He added that companies
can significantly reduce their dependency on the grid by installing
solar and combining it with a battery energy-storage solution.
Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) are instruments that allow
companies to receive power without any capital outlay for building
the plant that produces the power. By the same token, companies
that do invest in a plant of some sort and find they are making more
power than they need, could then sign PPAs with other parties to
sell the excess power.
Hybrid systems
A good deal of discussion centred on battery systems and battery
storage in the course of the 2023 Africa Energy Indaba which took place
in Cape Town in March. A company that has been very active in the
UAE and other parts of the Middle East, Yellow Door Energy, made the
case for combinations of solar, wind and battery storage as a solution
for the private sector.
An East London plant is producing vanadium battery electrolyte. Credit: Bushveld Energy
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