Mikhail interview BE 31.10.181 Nov 2018 07:17
31.10.18 Mikhail interview transcript Bushveld Energy
"I think that there's certain parts of the shortfall in energy in Africa that's been well documented. We know there's 650 million people that are without electricity supply and that forms about half of those in the world so it's an African problem.
So the question is how do you solve that and the thing is part of the solution is not only just bringing energy to those people, it's actually bringing energy to those areas. So the transmission lines in the entire continent outside of North Africa and South Africa are minimal. So what we have is a situation of a lot of these independent grids and there's a lot of areas that have no connection at all.
So how do you solve for that? Do you build a lot of transmission lines, which is basically how most of the world has developed in the last 80 years, or do you find another solution. There's this whole concept of leapfrogging. This is where storage plays a big roll because you can build distributive systems and you can have distributive generation but the problem is that those technologies for generation are limited and the ability of storage, when coupled with renewable generation you can create really high predictable electrical energy supply anywhere on the continent. It's uniquely advantageous for Africa because all the great solar radiation that we have. So if you take PV and you take storage you can give somebody a very high quality solution. And not just on an individual home basis or village, but actually on a commercial site and even in industrial sites. So something that works in very small levels and at large levels as well.
One if the requirements for storage when you're going off grid is that you actually need quite a bit of energy. It's not just about 1/2 hour, think about it, when the sun goes down how many hours do you have until the sun comes back on. It's 12 / 16 hours depending on what your radiation is and what the weather's like. So you need a solution that is an energy intensive solution and the flow battery technology is that. Lithium ion for example it's very good for short duration. Flow batteries, especially vanadium flow batteries, are very good for long duration where you are going to use the battery once a day or more and you're going to use it for a lot of hours - 6 hours, 8 hours or 10 hours. That's the unique value proposition of what we offer.
And because of our integrated model so as Bushveld we actually mine the vanadium here in SA and we're in the processes of establishing the manufacturing of the most expensive component of the battery which is the vanadium electrolyte here in SA as well. And then together by developing the projects and also eventually even producing the systems here we can have a very large African content solution for the African market."
Hope this is useful. Regards. Pdub.
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