The AGES team caught up with Theo Fischer, SAESA board member, and Urban Windelen, BVES executive director on the Enlit Africa expo floor.
Theo: Thank you, I’m Theo Fischer, and I’m a board member of the South African Energy Storage Association, and we are here to sign a memorandum of understanding with our counterparts in Germany. I’ll hand over to my colleague, Urban Windelen, please introduce yourselves.
Urban: Yes, thank you very much. My name is Urban Windelen. I’m an executive director of the Energy Storage Systems Association based in Berlin, Germany. We started this association 12 years ago with the view that flexibility will become increasingly important in our future energy systems.
And energy storage is a perfect tool for flexibility. You have to integrate flexible energy storage systems into the energy system to keep the system stable, especially when renewable energies are increasingly forming part of the basis of the energy system.
Theo: We have signed a memorandum of understanding, which in essence sets out the purpose of a cooperation agreement that aims to promote the advancement of energy storage technologies between South Africa and Germany and the rest of Africa.
It will also facilitate the exchange of information and good practice in projects and in policy and regulation.
And then probably, most importantly, to develop joint projects, which will range from storage at residential and municipal level through commercial and industrial storage applications, storage in the transmission system and in power pool systems.
We’re looking forward to work with the German Storage Association and to further foster ties towards enabling a clean energy transition with a key component being energy storage.
Urban: So I’m very happy to be here today at Enlit Africa, to see it being so crowded, and leading topics of discussion including energy transition, energy storage and smart management systems of the future.
And of course, I’m very happy about the cooperation agreement which we have entered into today. The South African organisation is still a young association. We are a little bit older. In Germany we have reached another level of energy transition. South Africa is perhaps in an earlier stage of the energy transition, and I think there’s a lot of potential in the collaboration between South Africa and Germany. A survey among our members identified South Africa as a very important and very interesting market for energy storage technologies.
So let’s cooperate, let’s find a good way for both countries in projects and in technological approaches. And of course, as Theo said, with a political and regulatory approach, you have to adapt the regulations if you want to change the energy system. It’s not only a technological stage, but it’s also a regulatory stage. And that’s very important to learn from each other in that direction to build a successful energy transition.
Theo: The next step would be to ensure that we have regular engagement, that we continue to explore projects that will realise most synergy, and this will range from battery energy storage to hydrogen.
We know that Germany and the European Union are proponents of hydrogen economies, and South Africa is ideally placed with very significant renewable energy resources to provide energy that can be stored, not only in batteries but also in hydrogen.
There is also further cooperation potential for longer duration storage. We are all used to the fact that we need to have storage for a few hours to endure loadshedding or some other incidents. But in the future grid, where we will have a lot more renewable energy, there will be certain days where there are energy shortfalls, requiring longer duration energy storage projects and technologies, including pumped hydro, compressed air and other opportunities.
So there’s a brave new world of energy storage that is upon us.
Urban: The next step, hopefully is a meeting in Cape Town with better weather. This is not the Cape Town I expected. (laughs)
Urban: Yes, definitely. But it has been raining the whole day. But that means it’s a good day for energy storage. It’s not such a good day for renewables.
Theo: It’s on rainy days like this that we will need energy storage.
Theo: Thank you.
Urban: Thank you very much.
Contact Us
VUKA is the trusted media partner to key professionals, policy makers, suppliers and
manufacturers. We provide unparalleled opportunities for industry-wide connection.
