By Lance Dickerson, MD of REVOV
Formula E takes to the streets of Cape Town to the backdrop of the longest daily bout of load shedding ever, and the weekend after a week of stage 6 load shedding, which saw some areas experience up to 11.5 hours of no electricity. The event comes days after the City of Cape Town announced measures to protect the city’s residents from the effects of stage 8 power cuts. Make no mistake, this coincidence has huge significance because as South Africans we all know: the race is on!
This is the race to prevent the grid from collapsing and to end, or at the very least, mitigate the crippling load shedding. It is no longer about inconvenience and sour milk. It is about the survival of our economy and the brutal impact load shedding has on SMEs in particular. A State of Disaster was declared to fast-track relief and as already mentioned, the race is on, and it looks, to the outsider at least, as if we’re not even out of the starting blocks.
This brings us back to the exciting Cape Town E-Prix. Organisers have said that the City of Cape Town has given guarantees of energy supply for the event, and the cars. The sight of marvels of engineering speeding through the streets of Cape Town, powered only by batteries and electric motors, will inspire a generation of activists who know that innovation and excitement need not reside in the old paradigm which is choking the environment.
This is important because there is a significant swell of opinion in South Africa that renewable energy doesn’t have what it takes to pull this country out of this deep, dark hole. They cite paltry daily generation numbers, usually in the region of 1000 to 1600MW of generation daily. They fail to cite how Eskom is dominated by coal, and that turbines and solar panels make up a tiny portion of the generation capacity.
They sidestep the unreliability of the coal fleet and suggest better management would yield better results. Wouldn’t that be great? What they don’t talk about is the environment – Eskom itself wants to be exempted from emissions restrictions so it can bring a coal unit back to life one year ahead of schedule. Everyone understands that we need power now, and that many of the short-term measures will involve more carbon emissions, but long-term the view absolutely must be fixed on renewables if we care about this planet, and that’s why a new generation of activists enthralled by the power of renewables and batteries must be encouraged.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis spoke highly last year at the announcement of the track about jobs that will be created by the event, the infrastructure improvements and the knock-on effect for businesses in the region. The painful irony about what load shedding is doing to businesses is stark.
Many of these businesses are using generators, but many are also using solar panels and batteries, or uninterrupted power supply systems. It’s within this world of batteries that we find a compelling story for activists who wish to call out companies and governments for not doing enough to protect the environment.
Renewable energy sources need battery back-up if they are to be relied on. It’s obvious – at night, the power generated by solar panels needs to be stored for future use or emergency backup. There’s no sun at night and so the batteries provide that safety net. The same applies to wind – if there is no wind, batteries store the power that has been generated so that it can be used when needed.
This brings us to another stark irony – the global drive and evolution towards renewable energy is putting a massive strain on the environment. The minerals that are required to build batteries need to be mined, and the increasing demand from the renewable sector and the electric vehicle sector means there is more and more of this damaging mining taking place. Why, one would ask, do we have to hurt the environment to go green?
The electric racing cars symbolise the promise of finding a way to provide backup energy without adding to the supply chains that come at a great carbon cost. The best chemistry for storage batteries is lithium iron phosphate. Batteries built for storage from scratch with raw material are called first life.
However, second life batteries are the ones that provide excitement for those who wish to genuinely go green and make investment decisions that don’t add to the planet’s strain. 2nd LiFe batteries are made by repurposing the good cells in replaced EV batteries and building a new unit entirely. That’s an important distinction – they are not second hand. They did not exist before being built, it’s just that they have EV cells, not cells built specifically for storage. This is a benefit as EV cells are designed to withstand very harsh conditions, and because good cells are used, their lifespan is almost identical to first life batteries.
If one considers the proliferation of EVs around the world, especially China and to a lesser degree Europe, it is clear that there is an abundant supply of EV cells to build 2nd LiFe batteries whose carbon footprint has already been paid in the cells’ previous incarnation. In other words, it’s an almost carbon-neutral energy storage solution – that’s what putting your money where your mouth is means. At REVOV we ask why would you choose to add to the carbon-intensive footprint of first life batteries when there is another effective, green option designed to fill a very important role in the circular economy?
And so when we watch the electric racing cars fly through a city battling crippling load shedding, let’s choose to see the positive symbolism of EV batteries holding the key to a sustainable supply of batteries for the renewable sector, while also being the genuinely green option. That’s a recipe for hope.
