South Africa (Commonwealth) _ South Africa’s first virtual electricity transfer model would probably go online by the end of the year. This could significantly increase the use of renewable energy while easing the load on struggling national utility Eskom, a top government official told the media.
Eskom has had to enforce record daily power cuts since last year, sometimes lasting up to 10 hours a day, to prevent a grid collapse due to its outdated plants and failing transmission grid.
The utility and Vodacom, the African division of Vodafone , announced a deal in August to implement a virtual wheeling electricity transfer model, which will let consumers purchase renewable energy from any producer anywhere in the country.
As a result, it should be possible for smaller consumers like factories, housing cooperatives, and isolated buildings to access energy from major renewable producers. During a conference, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa stated, “What we’re really trying to resolve is to make sure that we protect the South African economy from total collapse.”
The model is being developed by Eskom and Vodacom, and Onicah Rantwane, a distribution network expert at Eskom, predicted that it will be operational by the end of 2024. A one-to-one relationship between large buyers and sellers is usual in traditional wheeling, which is the transmission of energy from a private renewable energy source to a customer through Eskom’s grid.
Through the use of a technology platform that combines supply and consumption data to generate a single bill for consumers, virtual wheeling brings together a number of buyers and sellers.
Sitho Mdlalose, the chief executive of Vodacom South Africa, told Reuters that this would enable the company to power its 15,000 network facilities with renewable energy. That might be a huge relief for a sector where operators have had to spend billions on diesel generators and battery backups due to Eskom’s unreliable power delivery.
A virtual power plant (VPP) is a distributed power plant running on the cloud that combines the capacities of various distributed energy resources (DER) in order to improve power generation, engage in power trading or selling on the market, and take advantage of demand-side load-shedding alternatives.
Examples of virtual power plants that exist in the United States, Europe, and Australia include photovoltaic solar, energy storage, electric car chargers, and demand-responsive devices (such as water heaters, thermostats, and appliances).
