Could Tesla Save Eskom?

Power generation is a hot topic in South Africa at the moment. And everyone seems to have an opinion. Although most of those opinions are not really solutions.

When it comes to problems like this, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Why not look and see what has worked elsewhere. South Australia had big power issues a few years ago due to some crazy weather.

In a much publicised bet, Elon Musk said he could fix the problem with his battery Powerpacks. A private company called Neoen along with the government invested AUS $66 million in the system. In this case they used wind generation to charge up the batteries and when the power cut, the grid shifted to the batteries seamlessly resulting in no power cuts. When things were operating normally the operation can sell power back to the grid.

According to this article titled Tesla's big battery made another $4 million on its way to pay for itself, the project has been a roaring success. The state has saved $40 million in energy costs and the batteries have almost paid for themselves already. Because the state invested alongside the private entity, the returns have benefited everyone.

The conclusion here? Eskom must outsource these types of projects to the private sector. The Northern Cape has oodles of space and sunlight with not much else going on. But this will take years I hear you say? This particular project took 100 days. That was the bet Elon made. If it wasn't up and running in 100 days he would do it for free.



Now the trick is to convince private investors to trust in Eskom as a partner. That is probably the hardest part. The solutions are there, it is Eskom's willingness to cooperate that is key.