Cellcube Awards Contract For 1GW Batteries

Cellcube, officially called Enerox, has signed a five-year framework agreement with renewable energy developer Kibo Energy to deploy at least 1GW of storage in targeted Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries comprising of all 16 countries from South Africa up to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.

According to a report published and released on May 17, Kibo has been granted a first right of refusal to any production output that Cellcube establishes in the SADC region delivering CellCube core components or CellCube technology, as long as firm order commitments are made by Kibo.

The two companies have agreed to develop and deploy long-duration energy storage (LDES) solutions in the region using Cellcube’s technology. The Ireland-based, stock-listed developer has been granted conditional exclusive rights to the marketing, sales, configuration and delivery of CellCube’s VRFBs when deploying solutions for behind-the-meter microgrid applications. The exclusivity does not extend to utility-scale projects, though.

In an interview at last week’s Intersolar Europe trade event in Germany, Cellcube CEO Schoenfeldt had shared his reason behind this strategic focus on microgrids. “Our main target markets are high solar radiation and specifically on-site generation where industrial customers can use our batteries to avoid high grid costs. Particularly in places like North America, the Sub-Saharan region and Australia. Our focus in Europe is on security of supply for industrial clients and owners & operators of critical infrastructure,” he said adding, “For today’s sales we are looking at the microgrid business rather than large-scale front-of-meter because the supply chain hasn’t ramped up yet for vanadium batteries.”

Its target sectors for this rollout are ICT towers, gated communities, shopping centres and commercial parks while both companies will review a bespoke renewable energy project microgrid pipeline.