Swanepoel delved into the healthcare group’s energy journey at Enlit Africa 2023 on day one, 16 May, at the CTICC.

“And, this has a major effect on the hospital environment. Our people are tired, they need to come out to attend to power failures. We have people on site all the time during a power failure to safeguard the safety of patients, to make sure everything is working fine. Obviously, doing this day in and day out does have a major impact on our staff, emotionally and physically.”

Enter wheeling

Mediclinic is entering into its third phase of renewable energy procurement – by the end of May they will have around 28 hospitals using renewable power.

Matching up the hospital’s energy consumption with the availability of power is a finely tuned dance as weekdays are busy, and weekends are slower. “When you install PV plants onto the roofs, you need to make sure that you cover your load during the off-peak cycle – the weekend – when the load is very low.”

When they first started using solar power, battery energy storage systems were “very, very expensive.”

“There were no export tariffs for us at that stage and some of the municipalities didn’t even allow it.”

So, while they initially had to simply crowd on the solar PV panels and hope for the best, nowadays they are all about maximising the excess power and storing that in batteries to use during off-peak. “If we are lucky and there is no more loadshedding, we want to use that battery storage in peak times to absorb the expensive costs of electricity during periods of high demand.”

Practicing a form of arbitrage for energy efficiency would be a medium-term strategy, but long-term, Mediclinic is looking to wheeling. While the wheeling market is still developing in South Africa, they will rely heavily on their on-site solar PV power, but once the market gets going they see wheeling as useful to realise their carbon-neutral-by-2030 plans.

Role of energy storage

Some of the biggest challenges they’ve had to deal with in terms of energy storage has been price and cost, which admittedly has reduced tremendously since Mediclinic installed its first energy system. “I think the challenge for us at this stage, with regards to storage, is first of all, space. Where do we tie this into our existing facilities? Hospitals are very space-intensive. It’s usually the buildings and the parking areas. We need to have an elevated number of parking spaces, which we cannot take away.

“So, we must be very clever whenever we introduce or use additional space, that we don’t impact on the footprint of the hospital.”

Considerations about technology and type of battery as well as solar PV panel choices, means calling on the experts. “We need to make sure whatever we select will provide the necessary energy as we design the system.”

Design differs from hospital to hospital, so energy profiles and thus tariffs also differ. So, going forward, Swanepoel’s team has to answer questions around how to link grid, battery and generator and what interface to use. ESI

Petrus Swanepoel delivered a presentation on How to prepare for a successful storage project: Building the business case on day one of Enlit Africa 2023.

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