The Department of Electricity and Energy of South Africa has announced the successful bidders for the second round of its Battery Energy Storage Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (BESIPPPP).
Eight preferred bidders have been selected, totalling 615MW of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity, which will be built at various substations belonging to grid operator Eskom following financial close.
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The projects are spread across North West, Free State and Gauteng states and will provide power, energy and ancillary services to Eskom under 15-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) once online. Eskom has struggled to prevent widespread and frequent blackouts and load shedding, and BESS will help mitigate the risk of this.
All eight have power capacities of 77MW, and the winning developers were France-headquartered utility and independent power producer (IPP) EDF, Dubai-based IPP AMEA Power, and local developer and IPP Mulilo.
However, Mulilo and EDF worked together as part of a consortium for winning projects in BESIPPPP Window 1, and they may be doing the same for this Window (EDF just hired Envision to supply the BESS for those projects). Five of Window 2’s projects are Mulilo’s, with two for AMEA Power and one for EDF.
See a table from the Department of Electricity and Energy below, including capital cost recovery charge rates (CCR) and evaluation price.
The government department also revealed a list of 33 bidders for Window 3 of BESIPPPP last month, which included IPPS Globeleq and TotalEnergies.
South Africa is also supporting the deployment of large-scale energy storage via similar schemes for hybrid renewables and storage projects, including the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) and Risk Mitigation IPP Procurement Programme.
A REIPPPP-winning solar and 1.14GWh BESS project from IPP Scatec was inaugurated earlier this year, with electricity minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa calling South Africa a ‘trailblazer’ for solar and battery storage.
Energy-Storage.news has also reported today that AMEA Power has selected Trina to supply the BESS for a project in Egypt.
