Norwegian renewable energy giant Scatec has successfully launched a light storage fusion project with a total capacity of 540MW in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, it was announced on May 6, 2024. The project combines photovoltaic power generation and energy storage technology, aiming to utilize solar energy resources and efficiently store electricity to support local energy needs and promote the development of renewable energy.

The project is an integrated renewable energy project built by three sub-projects, including 540MW of solar photovoltaic capacity and 225 MW of battery capacity, with 1.14 GWH of storage capacity. The entire project covers a vast area of 879 hectares, equivalent to more than 1,500 football fields. The massive project consists of 1 million solar panels spread across 456 container-sized units, making it one of the largest hybrid solar and battery facilities worldwide. The implementation of this project demonstrates Scatec's leading position in the field of renewable energy technologies and positive contribution to the global energy transition.

South Africa's electricity market is large, with power demand in 2022 among the world's largest economies, but the power supply structure is highly dependent on coal, with Eskom holding about 95% of the market share. According to the plan, by 2030, South Africa needs to increase the proportion of renewable energy installed to 46.3%, of which wind and photovoltaic are key development areas.

South Africa is an energy storage market primarily driven by rigid demand. According to Jibon Consulting forecast, with the continuous increase of large-scale energy storage projects, it is expected that by 2024, South Africa's new energy storage installed capacity will continue to maintain rapid growth, is expected to reach 1.46GW/3.83GWh, an annual growth rate of 35%, and this part of the growth is mainly from household energy storage systems.

Under the active promotion of the South African government, the trend of light storage replacing diesel power generation has shown obvious broad prospects. Due to the significant reduction in the cost of energy storage technology, the return on investment (IRR) of energy storage projects has also increased, which has brought significant development opportunities for South Africa's energy storage market, indicating that it will become one of the important markets in the global energy storage sector.Editor/Zhang Liyuan