Good news for South Africans is that we should soon have “Tesla South Africa”.
South African born Elon Musk has decided to have his energy storage company, Tesla Motors, set up an office in SA starting with just one employee.
The man to run Tesla South Africa will be Evan Rice, currently the chief executive of the non-profit GreenCape organisation which was established in 2010 to grow the manufacturing & employment potential in the green economy in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Tesla In South Africa
Whilst Tesla has no immediate plans to bring the vehicles produced by Tesla Motors to South Africa, it is well on its way to making its energy storage Tesla Powerwall batteries available to South Africans.
In fact, as has been reported by htxt.Africa, Tesla already has distribution deals in place with several renewable energy companies in South Africa, such as Dako Power & Rubicon, to sell the Powerwall product.
Powerwall , designed to be matched with solar panels for small scale energy storage.
Basically the Tesla Powerwall is a home battery that comes in 7KWh daily cycle or 10KWh weekly cycle models for domestic use.
It is able to store usable energy from solar panels, that can be used in your homes just to save on your electricity bill or for times when there are power outages.
In Elon Musk’s own words
“You can take the Tesla Powerwall and it can scale globally. In fact, what we’ll see is something very similar to what happened with cellphones versus landlines where cellphones actually leapfrogged landline and there wan’t a need to put landlines in a lot of countries or in remote locations. I think it’s going to be incredibly helpful to people who don’t have electricity today.”
According to Evan Rice, who will be running the Tesla South Africa, municipal energy providers have been engaged regarding the possibility of customers being able to sell & feed stored energy back into the grid.
If South African authorities would see the sense in this system, which is immensely successful in Germany (it solved their energy crisis) it would help kill two birds with one stone.
It would encourage private capital to invest in the systems, solve the energy crisis & provide capacity for economic growth.
References & acknowledgements:
- htxt.Africa: http://www.htxt.co.za/2015/12/18/86528/
- Business Tech: http://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/107673/tesla-to-open-south-african-office/
- SouthAfrica.info: http://www.southafrica.info/business/investing/tesla-powerwall-to-south-africa-080116.htm#.Vs1QakAoSiD
- memeburn: http://memeburn.com/2015/12/elon-musks-tesla-motors-to-set-up-office-in-south-africa/