The times where Namibia remains a paradise for gas guzzlers will soon be over!
The automotive sector must urgently acquaint themselves with electric mobility and embrace rather than block this important development.
From the multitude of advantages that a transition to BEVs will include, the following two must be highlighted: EVs will run on our very own energy source, namely green regenerative electricity (mainly from PV-Solar and Wind) and – once introduced in numbers – they will provide distributed grid-storage which is necessary to balance variable electricity demand and the fluctuating supply of renewable energy sources. One example serves to illustrate this: On average, private cars remain stationary for 23 out of 24 hours per day.
Once the first 150,000 BEVs are part of a Namibian smart-grid, and assuming that each such car makes available 30kWh of storage to the grid (for money, of course!), a distributed battery system of 4.5 GWh capacity becomes available, which is about 50% more than Namibia’s requirement during night time. Even more significant will be the constant reduction of the price of electricity storage, driven down by the momentum of the cost-volume-cycle and based on ongoing improvements of Lithium-Ion batteries. This also implies that affordable stationary storage will become the order of the day and should be – from now on – a mandatory complement of any Solar or Wind park. As storage solutions for Namibia are debated, these considerations should be high on the agenda of the ECB, NamPower, the REDs, REIAoN and all other roll players.
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