On the 9th of this month, for the first time ever, Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility company, implemented Stage 6 Load shedding in which Eskom had to shed a load of 6000 MW to stabilise the grid. South Africa’s current installed capacity is 49.4 GW, according to the Draft Integrated Recourse Plan (2018) from South Africa’s Department of Energy.
Siemens Stiftung Foundation, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), Powering Agriculture, and Wetu recently organized an electric mobility conference in Kisumu, Kenya.
Nopia Ride, a taxi-hailing service that only uses electric cars is scaling up operations in Kenya. Nopia ran a pilot phase from August 2018 to March 2019. Three used Nissan Leafs imported from Japan and the United Kingdom were used in the pilot program. The pilot phase allowed the company to test its business case and showcase the business plan to potential investors with real trip data to validate its case.
Efficient mass transit systems that reduce the number of private vehicles on the streets should be the preferred solution in the quest to reduce congestion and emissions in Africa’s growing cities. In most African cities, informal operators are the backbone of the urban commuter network, servicing urban commuter routes with 14- to 35-seater minibuses and motorcycle taxis known as Boda Bodas.
Just like many EV brands blame the slow ramp-up of EV production on battery supply constraints, lithium-ion home batteries have not been produced in large volumes. With a huge world market to address, a limited quantity of the batteries from these global brands get to reach Africa.
Elon Musk’s home town of Pretoria recently hosted the Smarter Mobility Africa 2019 Summit, where the future of South Africa’s automotive manufacturing industry was one of the major sessions. According its website, “Smarter Mobility Africa brings together mobility thought leaders from business and government to consider, collaborate, co-create and consolidate efforts for accelerating the transition to electric and smart mobility.” Some of the discussions zoned in on how international markets are preparing for the transition to electromobility and how South Africa’s motor vehicle manufacturing industry could be impacted by this shift.
Econet are rolling out a first-of-its-kind and also the largest deployment of AC-coupled Li-ion batteries in the telecoms sector. Econet will deploy a giant Tesla Powerwall 2 fleet on its mobile network after a successful 12 month trial.
