Tesvolt Wins International Award for Rural Electrification

Wittenberg/Germany, Abidjan/Africa, 14 March 2019 – Tesvolt has been presented with an international award for rural electrification. The German manufacturer of power storage systems for agriculture and commerce received the prize in the category Private Sector in Australia, Europe and North America for establishing a sustainable energy supply on an avocado farm in Australia. The award was presented yesterday evening during a ceremony hosted by the Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) at the headquarters of the African Development Bank in Abidjan. Last year, the Australian project already won The smarter E AWARD at the Intersolar exhibition.

“This award honours the most passionate and innovative players working to provide people with access to energy. Tesvolt submitted a well-rounded concept which stood out against the rest, particularly with regard to its effectiveness and potential for use in other areas,” said Guilherme Collares Pereira, head judge and ARE Vice President. The international industry organization has approximately 150 members, mostly project developers and technology providers. It has been campaigning for over ten years for low- to middle-income households in rural regions, in particular, to receive access to affordable, safe and clean energy. About 1 billion people worldwide do not have an energy supply, most of them living in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Technical challenge

“We are particularly proud of this international award for rural electrification because Tesvolt holds fast to the vision of providing affordable, clean electricity to every corner of the world,” says Marcus Kruckow, Vice President of Internationalization at Tesvolt. “And we don’t just provide energy storage, we offer the entire energy solution. With the avocado farm, we were faced with the challenge of combining our lithium storage system with sodium-ion batteries – something never before achieved.”

100% self-sufficient avocado farm

The farm, located in Pemberton in the South West region of Western Australia, produces 90 tonnes of avocados a year on 5 hectares of land. Since they require a very large amount of water and sunlight to develop optimal flavour, the avocados are watered over the hot, dry Australian summer via hydraulic water pumps drawing from underground tanks. The tanks fill up with water over the very rainy winter.

Thanks to the intelligent power storage solution, the farm can now operate with 100 percent solar energy. A photovoltaic installation with a capacity of 53 kilowatt peak (kWp) covers the base load together with a 160 kWh sodium ion-based storage system. The 48 kWh Tesvolt storage system supplies the electricity for the hydraulic water pumps, which require a particularly large amount of electricity upon startup. The sodium-ion batteries are unable to absorb these peak loads as they don’t discharge fast enough. By contrast, the Tesvolt storage system charges and discharges very quickly since it is equipped with Samsung SDI’s high-efficiency prismatic lithium cells. Due to its high performance, this type of battery cell is also used in modern electric cars, for example.