Blue Nova Launches The MegaBoy 1 MWh Storage Product
South Africa has been experiencing a lot of electricity rationing recently as the power utility, Eskom, struggles to meet demand. We recently looked at how these electricity blackouts have helped nurture South Africa’s nascent stationary storage assembly and manufacturing market. Now one of the players in this space, Blue Nova Energy, a member of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Listed Reunert Group, looks to be ramping up nicely and has just launched the MegaBoy.
The MegaBoy, which Blue Nova also calls the intelligent Energy Storage System (iESS), is a grid-scale stationary storage product. Blue Nova says this is the first of its kind to be manufactured in South Africa. The MegaBoy is a 250 kW, 1 MWh, scalable battery pack, making it also suitable for rural mini-grids, commercial & industrial (C&I), as well as grid-scale applications. The MegaBoy is designed for both off-grid and grid-connected applications.
With power outages in South Africa ranging from about 2 to 4 hours a day, the MegaBoy could be a perfect drop-in replacement for diesel backup generators at schools, small office parks, small supermarkets, and small shopping centres whose peak power demand is around 250 kW, giving them at least 4 hours of backup time. This would be perfect for space-constrained sites that may have limited space for solar, with the MegaBoy charging from the grid at low demand times.
Energy security is top of the mind for most facilities managers at this point in time, when businesses have been severely affected by the ongoing power cuts. Any savings from charging the battery during off-peak tariff times and discharging during the peak tariff periods would be an added advantage that would make the business case more attractive in the long term.
Blue Nova uses lithium-iron-yttrium-phosphate (LiFeYPO4) prismatic cells from Chinese manufacturers like Winston (Thundersky). These are then assembled into battery packs in South Africa in a containerised solution in which Blue Nova incorporates its own proprietary energy management system, environmental management system, battery management system, fire suppression system, remote monitoring, and an integrated AC distribution system.
