The company is set to deliver a lithium storage system with a total capacity of 2.68 megawatt-hours (MWh) which will provide water pumps in an agricultural project in Rwanda’s Eastern Province with emergency power. 

“In Rwanda, the power supply fails three or four times a day for between 5 and 45 minutes. For this reason, an important criterion in the call for tender was that the storage system is able to absorb electricity from the PV power plant and release it again as quickly as possible, explains Simon Schandert, Director of Engineering at Tesvolt. “Only very powerful off-grid storage systems can supply the necessary emergency power several times per day, and there are only a few storage systems on the market which meet these requirements.” Schandert also states that affordability was also an important consideration.

Tesvolt is set to supply a total of 134 fully assembled lithium storage systems for the 44 water pumps. The company claims the storage system will supply the irrigation project with clean and safe emergency power, also boosting yields in local agriculture, thus  improving the living conditions of the approximate 2,000 farmers who currently live in extreme poverty. 

The Tesvolt battery management system monitors each individual cell when the system is in operation so that any damaged cells are identified before they can fail entirely. If a defective cell is discovered, this will allow the installer to replace the single cell without the need to replace the entire battery block, which may be the case with other storage systems.