Johannesburg-based Bushveld Energy has selected Abengoa, a Spanish multinational company in the infrastructure, energy, and water sectors, for the construction of a hybrid microgrid power plant at the Vametco Alloys mine in South Africa.
The plant is an integrated power solution comprising a 3.5 MW solar photovoltaic plant and a battery energy storage system (BESS) that uses Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs) of capacity 1 MW/ 4 MWh. The VRFB-BESS system will be supplied by Enerox Holdings Ltd.
Bushveld Energy is a unit of Bushveld Minerals, a low-cost, vertically integrated primary vanadium producer that also owns the Vametco Alloys mine. Enerox is a Bushveld subsidiary and one of the world’s first and largest developers, manufacturers, and distributors of VRFBs.
The proposed power plant will be the first commercial-scale hybrid project with VRFBs in the continent and the first ‘MW scale’ hybrid power plant for a mine in South Africa. It will boost the energy autonomy of the Vametco mine and reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 114,000 tons over 20 years. It will also showcase the role of vanadium as a long duration option in the global energy storage market.
Abengoa’s proprietary AEMS energy management system will allow the plant to operate independently or jointly, either as a standalone system or as a fully functional microgrid.
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