Eskom unveils a first of its kind largest battery storage project in the African continent
10 November 2023
Eskom unveiled the first of its kind largest Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project not only in South Africa but in the African continent. Eskom officially opened the Hex BESS site at Worcester in the Western Cape yesterday. The Hex BESS is the first project to be completed under Eskom’s flagship BESS project announced in July 2022 to help alleviate the pressure on the national electricity grid. The BESS project serves as a direct response to meet one of the urgent needs to address South Africa's long-running electricity crisis by adding 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.
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.
“We are grateful to the various funders of the Eskom BESS project, and to our construction partner Hyosung Heavy Industries. This is proof of what we can achieve when we work as a team and in collaboration with industry and local communities,” remarked Eskom’s Group Executive for Distribution, Monde Bala.