PODCAST: Big batteries? Here’s a way to do it our way...

As South Africa’s efforts to plug the gaps in our electricity supply grind slowly forward there’s a clear hole emerging in the plans for new, renewable energy generation.

The hole is the absence of storage, of batteries, which are being rapidly deployed now around the world at a fast pace. In South Africa, though, batteries are a sort of afterthought.

Assuming the government-planned 513MW of battery storage are actually built, storage will still be just a fraction of the new generation procured. It doesn’t make sense.

In this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, Peter Bruce talks to Frank Spencer, head of deployment at Bushveld Energy, a subsidiary of Bushveld Mining, which is listed in London.

Bushveld is building a plant near East London to make electrolytes for its vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB). Spencer says a plentiful supply of vanadium in South Africa shouldn’t be overlooked as the rest of the world rushes into lithium ion batteries. The VRFB lasts way longer and doesn’t catch fire – and we can build it here.

To prove it, Bushveld is not only making electrolytes in East London, it is building a 3MW solar plant at its mine near Brits in North West to feed a new 1MWh battery, a demonstration VRFB, to show potential new clients.

If Bushveld gets it right, towns and cities could go the direct battery route and get Eskom to charge them when it is not load-shedding. It’s a new option. Different, and local.

Podcasts from the Edge is a production of TimesLIVE Podcasts.

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