Renewable Energy Storage in the Republic of South Africa

Abstract

The objectives were to perform extensive research on the South African Renewable Energy Storage capabilities and business case. The focus was to investigate the advantages it would bring to the country to invest in energy storage solutions to aid in not only meeting the electricity demand forecast for the next 25 to 40 years, but also focusing on the energy dips, known as the “Duck Curve”. This could provide flexibility to the National Grid in parallel with reducing the carbon footprint of the current generating stations and the transmission-and distribution networks by either remodelling them, or to completely replace them with a better solution such as renewable energy with storage. The final expected output of the research would be to develop a basic spreadsheet calculator that is capable of calculating the energy and financial impact it would have when integrating a certain amount of storage into the national grid.