Construction of Eskom’s first battery energy storage project begins
8 December 2022
Eskom and Hyosung Heavy Industries, one of the appointed service providers for the Eskom Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project, yesterday marked the beginning of construction of the first energy storage facility under Eskom’s flagship BESS project. The sod-turning ceremony was held at the Elandskop BESS site, located within Msunduzi and Impendle Local Municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.
Construction will take between seven and twelve months and the batteries on the site will be charged from the main grid via Eskom’s Elandskop substation. The facility will have a capacity of 8MW, equivalent to 32MWh of distributed electricity, enough to power a town such as Howick for four hours. Among the notable benefits of the BESS is that it will boost the network during peak hours, thereby reducing the strain on the network during peak hours.
“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 André de Ruyter, Eskom Group Chief Executive, speaking at the event. “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.”
Elandskop is part of Phase 1 of Eskom’s BESS project, which includes the installation of approximately 199MW additional capacity, with 833MWh storage of distributed battery storage plants at eight Eskom Distribution substation sites throughout the country. This phase also includes about 2MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity.