“It shows how distributed energy resources can complement traditional infrastructure investments by rapidly unlocking value at scale from assets that are already in place,” Kornik said.
The Eskom programme Kornik mentioned was run in 2022, when the utility selected 343MW of large-scale BESS bids, each of 4-hour duration. As of September last year, through various procurement programmes, the government of South Africa had secured nearly 1.7GW/11GWh of grid-scale BESS capacity.
This included projects Eskom would own directly, as well as third-party-owned assets under contract. It should be noted, however, that as of the time Energy-Storage.news published a special report on South Africa’s BESS procurements last year, some 45.1% of projects with awarded contracts had not yet reached financial close.
That said, while large-scale energy storage has gathered the most attention internationally, within South Africa, significant growth in small-scale renewable energy and energy storage uptake has been just as visible.
Value beyond protection from outages
