If you’ve spent any time in or near South Africa over the past two decades, you’ll know what load shedding is. It’s the controlled, temporary switching off of electricity supply to certain areas when the national grid (powered by arch-villain/utility Eskom) doesn’t have enough generation capacity to meet demand. Load shedding is used to prevent a total system collapse – and, fingers crossed, it’s a thing of the past. At midnight on 12 March 2026, South Africa passed 300 days without it.

But load shedding is just one way to manage the national grid. Another is peak shaving, where electricity consumption is reduced during periods of maximum grid demand, and yet another is load levelling, where excess energy is stored during low-demand periods and released during high-demand periods to flatten the load profile.

All three solutions – load shedding, peak shaving and especially load levelling – are enabled by battery energy storage systems (BESS). Hold your energy supply in reserve, and release it when it’s needed, and you’ve solved your demand problem.

‘BESS infrastructure helps take pressure off grids, giving them room to adjust and upgrade without disrupting energy delivery to communities and businesses,’ explains Pervin Gurie, director of digital & systems division at energy solutions firm WEG Africa. ‘BESS helps shave the peaks and reduce the overall load on the grid. These systems let companies do energy stacking to generate and store energy when it’s cheapest, use generated energy on tap and wheel energy into the grid.’

Gurie says the range of BESS solutions supports everything from small to utility-scale sites and industries, including mining, agriculture, light and heavy industrial, and commercial. ‘These are enabling large individual businesses, commercial and industrial parks, and entire communities to store and access power reliably without placing stress on the national grid,’ he says.

Bernard Janse van Rensburg, logistics and procurement manager at independent power producer (IPP) Mulilo, says the versatility of battery storage is what makes it so attractive, ‘Beyond energy shifting, BESS can help balance the frequency of the grid, reduce the need for expensive diesel peakers, and even defer transmission upgrades.’

Crucially, BESS can also store solar energy for use when the sun’s not shining, and wind energy for when the wind’s not blowing – making it an indispensable component in the renewable energy ecosystem.

‘Battery storage is no longer optional,’ insists Janse van Rensburg. ‘It’s now essential to South Africa’s energy future. It allows us to harness solar and wind energy when it’s abundant and then distribute it when it’s needed most, filling the gap left by our baseload power, effectively stabilising the national grid.’

Renewable energy provider Juwi agrees. In a company statement, Juwi forecast that BESS will continue to grow as a key design choice across an increasing share of projects. It cited three reasons. ‘First, more businesses that have already invested in renewables are likely to add batteries behind the meter to create shaped, load-specific solutions,’ the company said. ‘In some cases, this enables partial or functional defection from the grid, where customers prioritise certainty, resilience and cost control.’

Second, batteries are increasingly deployed in off-grid and weak-grid hybrid solutions, playing a direct operational role in stabilising supply and reducing reliance on liquid fuels. Here, Juwi’s EUR30 million off-grid solar PV and battery storage project at the GCO mine in Senegal provides a useful case study. The 20 MWp solar plant and 11 MWh battery system will meet 20% of the mine’s energy needs, while cutting 25 000 tons of annual carbon emissions.

Third, Juwi pointed to South Africa moving into a phase of large-scale, grid-supporting storage, driven by the Battery Energy Storage Independent Power Producer Procurement programme (BESIPPP), a government-led initiative to bring large-scale storage online. ‘Public procurement under the BESIPPPP has continued,’ Juwi noted. ‘Meanwhile, Eskom’s own BESS roll-out is positioned as a grid-strengthening intervention to support greater renewable integration.’

This transition to large-scale storage is already visible in Eskom’s distributed BESS project, which began its first phase in 2021. Under this initiative, the national utility implemented an 800 MWh system spanning eight sites across the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. The Hex BESS site at Worcester, near the Hex River Valley, was the first to be completed, storing 100 MWh of energy – enough to power the town for about five hours – by capturing excess night-time wind and supplying energy at dawn as local farms and factories begin their day.

‘This was new technology for everybody,’ Lwando Limba, programme manager at Eskom, said at the launch. ‘The batteries themselves are the first of their kind in South Africa as well as on the continent. We have had specialists all over the world coming through to have a look at this specific site. They can take whatever knowledge they need. This project has taught us work sequencing, procurement timelines, logistics and safety. We’re sharing these lessons with others who want to learn from our experience.’

Another noteworthy project is Scatec’s Kenhardt Solar PV Park, which began operating in December 2023. Located in the Northern Cape, this large-scale 540 MWp solar power project with 1 140 MWh of battery storage provides dispatchable renewable energy to the grid. During daylight hours, the plant uses solar panels to supply electricity to the grid while simultaneously charging the on-site BESS. After dusk, it delivers power by drawing from the battery.

The project has been awarded a 20-year power-purchase agreement (PPA) with Eskom and was bid under the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement programme (RMI4P). This emergency procurement round was designed to address South Africa’s short-term electricity supply gap by reducing reliance on expensive diesel-based peaking power generators.

While the programme was technology-agnostic, it required that the projects be able to dispatch power to the grid between 5 am and 9:30 am. Kenhardt is located about 120 km south of Upington, and while not much happens out there (the town’s main attractions are a 600-year-old camelthorn tree and a vast salt pan), it is perfectly located for solar-linked BESS. In the height of summer, the town sees daylight from around 5:30 am to 7:30 pm. Even in winter, it still sees about 10 hours of daylight.

That’s plenty for solar power – and there’s a growing sense that, as Africa’s renewable energy supplies expand, its energy shortages will turn into abundance. However, as WEG Africa’s Gurie emphasises, that abundance will be wasted if it cannot be stored and managed. This is where BESS will play a fundamental role.

‘Batteries are not just storage,’ says Gurie. ‘They are the bricks and mortar that we can use to create our modern energy foundation. We are building the capacity to create cheap and abundant energy. Now, we’ll start investing in making sure that abundance always serves our needs. BESS is a central part of that investment.’

By Mark van Dijk
Images: Gallo/Getty Images