The feasibility study for the first battery energy storage system (BESS) in the central southern African country of Zambia is currently under way, Africa Greenco (Greenco) business development head Wezi Gondwe told delegates at the Enlit Africa conference in Cape Town, on Thursday. Greenco is a Zambian power services company.

The $1-million feasibility study is being funded by the US, and carried out by US-based internationally-recognised finance and engineering advisory company K&M Advisors. The feasibility study is covering every aspect of the project, to ensure its optimisation, including its developmental impact on the community where it will be located.

This battery energy storage system project is being developed by a special purpose vehicle created by Greenco. It will have a capacity of up to 25 MW and a preferred bidder for the contract has been chosen, after a tender process. Greenco is also working with the Zambian regulators to ensure that the project proceeds smoothly and meets all requirements.

“Greenco is an intermediary in the electricity trading space,” explained Gondwe. It came into being because the bankability of Southern African national electricity utilities has been impaired. This has meant that, in Zambia and Zimbabwe, independent power producers, using renewable energy sources, didn’t have routes to the market. Greenco provides them with routes to alternative, diversified electricity markets, including via the Southern African Power Pool.

But the challenge with renewable energy, he pointed out, is intermittency. Solar power usually generates electricity for six to eight hours a day (in Zambia). This intermittency can introduce instability into transmission grids, which can put those grids at risk. In certain seasons, that instability can be severe. Grid balancing power is very expensive.

The fact that renewables do not generate power all the time has created the requirement for energy storage. With this project, energy produced by solar arrays will be stored in batteries and then discharged when needed. Not only will this provide energy when the Sun isn’t shining, but it allows the creation of a ‘baseload profile’ of electricity transmission through the grid. And there are also other ‘use case’ scenarios of the BESS, he noted.

The battery storage system will also bring other benefits. It will reduce carbon dioxide emissions because it will replace diesel generation. It will provide more reliable and cheaper power. It will improve the energy balance in Zambia and more widely in Southern Africa. It will support grid modernization in Zambia, and create jobs.