Blue Nova Energy, a member of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Listed Reunert Group looks to be ramping up South Africa’s nascent stationary storage assembly and manufacturing market. It 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.
They use 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 containerized solution.
After this 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.
Kehua Tech battery inverters (from China) are the chosen inverters integrated into the MegaBoy. Blue Nova lists the lifecycle of the battery as 5000 cycles at 80% DOD.
Reference- Clean Technica, Blue Nova website & PR, Kehua website