Africa’s installed capacity of renewable energy, which stood at 12.6 gigawatt (GW) in 2019, is set for consecutive years of growth, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. The continent’s capacity is forecast to reach 16.8 GW in 2020, add another 5.5 GW in 2021, and further climb to 51.2 GW in 2025, led by growth in solar and wind projects in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Ethiopia.

At present, South Africa leads the continent in terms of installed renewable energy capacity with 3.5 GW of wind, 2.4 GW of utility solar, and a solar-dominant 1 GW pipeline of projects in development. Egypt and Morocco are in second and third place in terms of solar capacity with 1.6 GW and 0.8 GW, respectively.

Nearly 40 out of 50 African countries have installed – or plan to install – wind or solar projects. And although the learning curve may be steep for first-time market entrants with sizable development pipelines, inexperienced players will be able to leverage the lessons learned in Egypt, South Africa and Morocco and implement this knowledge into development plans.

Algeria will see the most renewable growth in Africa towards 2025, increasing capacity from just 500 megawatt (MW) in 2020 to almost 2.9 GW in 2025. The increase will come primarily from one mega-project, the 4 GW Tafouk 1 Mega Solar Project, which will be developed in five phases of 800 MW capacity each, to be tendered between 2020 and 2024. Rystad Energy expects three of the tendered projects with 2.4 GW of capacity will be commissioned by 2025.

Tunisia will also see formidable growth, skyrocketing from 350 MW of renewable capacity in 2020 to 4.5 GW in 2025. The additions will come from larger solar plants such as the 2 GW TuNur Mega Project, which is currently in the early stages of development and is expected to come on line by 2025.

In terms of speed, Egypt has been one of the quickest African nations to install solar and wind since 2017, and currently has approximately 3 GW of installed capacity. The country has a massive 9.2 GW development pipeline – which mostly consists of wind projects – putting Egypt on track to overtake South Africa in 2025 and become the green powerhouse of Africa.

Growth will come from large projects such as the 2 GW Gulf of Suez Red Sea Wind Project, which will be located in the governorate of the Red Sea. Of the capacity to be installed, 500 MW will be developed by German giant Siemens Gamesa and 1,500 MW remains to be awarded. Four out of the top 10 projects to be developed in Africa in the next five years will be in Egypt, underscoring the Egyptian government’s commitment to its renewable goals.

From a windswept sea wall on England’s north Kent coast, Marie King points to miles of empty marshy farmland where there will soon be thousands of solar panels and one of the country’s largest battery installations.

A mile from the village of Graveney’s Norman church, hundreds of shipping containers full of battery cells will help deliver power to the UK grid. It will provide a service essential to managing the increasing use of wind and solar power, the supply of which fluctuates with the weather, and delivering on politicians’ promises of a greener future.

“It’s the scale of this project that worries me,” says Ms King, a retiree who used to work in financial services in London. “We’re not against renewable energy — we just think it needs to be in the right place.”

Such battery plants are set to become a familiar sight across the UK and elsewhere. Renewables such as wind and solar are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world, but they need storage to be a viable, stable source of energy. Last week, UK prime minister Boris Johnson vowed to install enough wind turbines to power every home by 2030, but that will require solutions to manage the intermittent supply of energy. 

That is where batteries — devices which store electricity as chemical energy — fit in. Lithium-ion batteries, used in mobile phones and Tesla electric cars, are currently the dominant storage technology and are being installed from California to Australia, and most likely Kent, to help electricity grids manage surging supplies of renewable energy. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has said he expects the company’s energy business — including the supply of solar and huge lithium-ion batteries for the grid — to be as big as its car business in the long term.

But along with lithium-ion batteries, cheaper, longer-duration storage technologies — most of which are not yet cost-effective — will be required to fully replace fossil-fuelled power plants and allow for the 100 per cent use of renewable energy. At the moment, gas-fired power plants bridge the gap from renewables to provide stable supplies of energy for longer than current batteries can.

As governments around the world focus on addressing climate change and stimulating the post-COVID economy, batteries have become an increasingly important part of the public conversation. It is now abundantly clear that the world’s ability to transition to clean energy and electric vehicles depends on the amount and quality of batteries that are available. Lithium-ion batteries are the only technology that can meet the performance requirements for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. However, the demand for lithium-ion batteries is rising far quicker than investments in the raw materials required to produce them. Industry analysts expect demand for batteries to exceed material supplies by mid-decade. Alternatives to lithium-ion batteries are urgently needed to ensure that the transition to clean energy continues unabated.

Zinc-Ion Batteries: A New Li-ion Alternative

Lithium-ion batteries were initially developed because of their ability to store a large amount of energy in a small amount of mass and volume. This high energy density is of critical importance for portable applications like electronics and electric vehicles. However, stationary applications like renewable energy storage do not benefit from this energy density. In fact, the safety issues inherent in lithium-ion batteries pose significant challenges for this market. This application, therefore, offers the most opportunity for a lithium-ion alternative.

To replace lithium-ion in stationary energy storage, new battery chemistries need to be able to match lithium-ion’s power capabilities while offering improved safety and lifetime cost. Despite many attempts, few technologies have been able to achieve this. Flow batteries, for example, offer improved safety and lifetime cost, but offer too low power to be broadly useful in the electrical grid. The same is true for zinc-air batteries. Zinc-halide batteries appear to be the best candidate for replacing lithium-ion, but they are over 10x the size of comparable lithium-ion systems which makes them poorly suited for residential applications and has serious cost implications.

A tourism development in Saudi Arabia which will have its own international airport and hopes to attract over a million visitors each year will be 100% powered by renewable energy, with the help of a 1,000MWh battery storage facility.

The Red Sea Project will include more than 50 hotels on the west coast of Saudi Arabia and the company behind it, The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), has pledged that it will be fully powered by wind and solar. The project’s masterplan was approved in late 2018 by Saudia Arabia’s King Salman. The resort is scheduled to open in phases, with the first phase including the airport and four hotels to open by the end of 2022.

TRSDC awarded a contract this month for utilities infrastructure provision for the resort, with a consortium led by ACWA Power, the Saudi energy project investor and developer company behind some of the region’s largest – and the world’s lowest-cost – solar power projects. The site is expected to have an initial demand of 210MW and the consortium was awarded a 25-year contract.

ACWA Power’s consortium is a public-private partnership which includes financing from Saudi and international banks, including Standard Chartered Bank from the UK and the Silk Road Fund from China. Silk Road purchased a minority stake in ACWA Power’s renewables arm earlier this year. The partnership will ensure the design, construction and operation of utilities systems and associated infrastructure, including water treatment and desalination.

TRSDC representatives emailed Energy-Storage.news this week to say that the Red Sea Project will be powered 24/7 with the use of the battery storage system. The batteries will support energy resilience across the entire 28,000km2 site, including powering facilities at night-time and ensuring power if outages or other problems occur across its networks. TRSDC said that the combination of wind and solar will guarantee reliable supplies of energy.

US policymakers should explore the possibility of scrapping the investment tax credit (ITC) for solar PV and instead offer fiscal support for battery storage systems, an energy finance executive has said.

Andrew Redringer, managing director and group head of utility and alternative energy at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said the current ITC for both solar and wind “needs to go away” as the policy is “artificially lowering the price of the power”.

Speaking at the Solar & Storage Finance USA (SSFUSA) event, organised by PV Tech publisher Solar Media, Redringer said that projects can now stand alone without the ITC, given where costs have come.

“I’m all for ITC for battery, but I think the ITC has served its purpose for wind and solar, and it’s causing an unlevel playing field for some developers… the ones who have tax capacity are getting an unfair advantage.”

The current ITC permits solar system owners to recoup 26% of a project’s total cost from their taxes, having dropped from the previous 30% rate on 1 January. The credit is set to decrease to 22% next year, and as of 2022 the residential level drops to zero and the commercial credit falls to a permanent 10% level.

But there have been growing calls for the ITC to be extended, either back at the 30% rate or frozen at the existing 26% for a further period of time. A long-term extension of the ITC was among the key policies put forward by the Solar Energy Industries Alliance (SEIA) in a new document aimed at providing guidance for the incoming Biden administration and new members of Congress. The trade body describes the ITC as the “single most effective current policy available to encourage clean energy deployment”.

Despite hopes that a standalone ITC for energy storage would come into place this year, current laws mean storage units are only eligible for the credit if installed at the same time as a solar energy project, meaning retrofits miss out.

The importance of software for the bankability of a project is growing, as the opportunities for energy storage around the United States continues to expand.

Within the Assessing the Battery Market: Opportunities and Challenges in 2021 panel at the Solar & Storage Finance USA event, organised by Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media and taking place online this week, industry experts explained the security software can provide when funding storage projects.

Both front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter models are bankable, explained Alain Halimi, director of Project & Specialized Finance Americas for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and it comes down more to the specifics.

“It’s more around the battery front, how it’s going to work and what kind of management team are backing the project, because battery projects are really complex when you when you think about it, because they are put in an electrical grid system which is not necessarily designed for them.”

As batteries can play into a number of markets, including arbitrage and frequency regulation, the management of them is very important to their bankability.

“Don’t be intimidated by software,” continued Halimi, “humans cannot necessarily manage all of these values, contract and requirement to charge discharge at the right time, and basically, also fulfil your requirements across device contracts.”

Therefore, the use of software is an increasingly important, and something Halimi said as a lender they have spent a lot of time working to understand.

“If the developer doesn’t have the right system, basically, the project is not bankable, you won’t be able to get into a bank debt, or even sometimes even equity.”