The impact of the increasing residential battery backup systems on load shedding

Abstract

Load shedding has become the norm in South Africa. These rolling blackouts currently range from Stage 1 to Stage 6. Households are disempowered for 2–4 hours and for an average of 1.5–9 hours per day. In financially unequal South Africa, heavy users can afford battery backup solutions to keep the lights on. However, installing these at scale, without solar generation, eventually neuters the utility’s ability to stabilise the grid and avert a blackout with shedding. Here we assess and quantify the impact of these interventions using an electricity data set of 12 000 households.