Eskom on Thursday said it has commenced work with service provider Hyosung Heavy Industries on the construction of a huge battery energy storage system (Bess).

A sod-turning ceremony was held on Wednesday at the Elandskop site, located in the Msunduzi and Impendle local municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, Eskom said.

Work on the flagship Bess project commences as South Africa has again this week been plunged into stage-6 load shedding, equalling the worst-ever power cuts the country has experienced.

Construction of the Elandskop site will take up to 12 months, with the batteries to 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 in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands for four hours, Eskom said in a statement.

“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 these times,” it said.

Elandskop is part of phase 1 of the Bess project, and includes the installation of 199MW of additional capacity, with 833MWh of battery storage, at eight Eskom distribution substation sites throughout South Africa. Phase also includes about 2MW of solar PV.

A second phase involves the installation of 144MW of storage equivalent (equivalent to 616MWh) at four distribution sites and one transmission site. Solar PV in this phase will be 58MW.

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All phase-1 sites are planned to be commissioned by 30 June 2023 and phase-2 sites by December 2024.

“The cost of the project will be approximately R11-billion and is being funded through concessional loans from the World Bank, African Development Bank and the New Development Bank,” Eskom said. – © 2022 NewsCentral Media