How one major landlord is using solar and batteries to power its malls

One of South Africa’s biggest retail landlords, Resilient Reit, is currently one of the largest producers of energy from rooftop solar photovoltaic installations.

By the end of December, its local retail centre portfolio of 1.2 million square metres of gross lettable area was on track to have installations with a total capacity of 46.1MWp (megawatt peak). This compares with Growthpoint’s FY23 target of 27.1MWp and Redefine’s 31.9MWp installed as at the end of February.

At present, Resilient is adding more than 20MWp of solar a year. It more than doubled its capacity last year.

By the end of 2023, the plan is to have 68.9MWp of rooftop solar installations operational.

Until the relaxation of the 1MW (megawatt) threshold for private generation, it had been installing rooftop solar projects at its shopping centres in the 1MWp range.

Since the change, Resilient says it has been “able to increase the installed capacity at each shopping centre to the full space allocation available”. It says these “planned capacity increases will be actioned over the next five years and will substantially change Resilient’s footprint”.

Its installation at Boardwalk Inkwazi in Richards Bay of 6.8MWp, implemented last year, is the “biggest rooftop installation in South Africa”.

In the five years to 2021, its plants produced a total of 51 283MWh (megawatt hours). In the 2021 financial year, Resilient says the “voided grid energy cost” across the portfolio was R32.8 million (its share was R26.2 million).

It says self-provisioning provides it with the following benefits:

• Reliance on Eskom will be mitigated;
• Electricity is generated at a lower unit cost than current and projected future Eskom utility/local municipal costs;
• It’s a hedge against the spiralling escalation of purchased electricity;
• Standby energy when coupled with energy storage is available when utility supply is curtailed; and
• Self-provisioning of electricity can be utilised to reduce reliance on standby diesel generation.

Battery projects

Towards the end of 2021, it commissioned two lithium-ion battery projects (with 500kW and 1 000kW control systems). It says these are financially viable as the cost of these batteries has reduced by 85% over the last decade (which homeowners who have installed solar, inverters and batteries in recent years will know).

These would operate alongside solar plants at The Grove Mall and Irene Village Mall, both in Pretoria. The 500kW/1.2MWh battery, manufactured by Blue Nova Energy, has been installed at The Grove Mall.

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It says these batteries would be “utilised to assist with ‘peak shaving’ and to reduce connection size through demand management”. This, it says, would “reduce its dependency on the grid”.

It sketched the potential of this solution in its December 2020 results, calling it the “ultimate solution” with “load shedding mitigation, self-consumption and peak-shaving”.

This illustration would’ve been premised on a 1MWp installation, given the regulations in place at that time. In a solution such as this, it said, “increasing the size of the PV [photovoltaic] installation to 4MWp would significantly reduce the energy required from the grid”.

“With batteries, maximum demand could be reduced further. The batteries can store energy when there is excess PV generation and discharge in the late afternoon to reduce the grid draw and shave the peak.”

Resilient intends for these pilot projects to help it “gain a better understanding of their capabilities in a retail environment”.

“A simple and well understood use of these batteries is the shifting of energy from a lower tariff period to that of a higher tariff period, known as energy arbitrage,” it says.

It adds that its focus is to use the battery to “manage the energy demand”.

“This will increase the financial viability of the project and improve the quality of the power, both at the shopping centres and for the utility provider.”

Read: Why SA needs a rapid build-out of renewables

Resilient says batteries allow it to “have control over energy use at its shopping centres”.

“Dependant on the size of the battery, it could provide a solution to load shedding with this synchronisation further reducing the amount of diesel being burned.”

The rapid deterioration of Eskom’s generation performance, which has necessitated near-constant load shedding since September, will have fundamentally changed the performance and economics of these battery projects.

The group’s stated goal is to have a total of 87MWp of generating capacity across its portfolio by 2025 (due to co-ownership of some assets, its share is 72MWp).

If it achieves this target, which it is on track to exceed, this capacity will provide 125 000MWh of green energy per year across these centres.

At this point, 39% of its energy use will be green with a plan to have this above 50% by 2027, following last year’s relaxation of private generation regulations.

Beyond rooftop solar and batteries, Resilient says it is “exploring a 10MW ground mount solar facility on vacant land” bordering one of its shopping centres.

Moneyweb believes this to be property the group already owns adjacent to the Mall of the North in Polokwane. Energy generated at this solar project would be wheeled to its other shopping centres, which will “reduce its electricity cost and will result in a significant reduction [of] Resilient’s carbon footprint”.

It says this project could yield 18 358MWh of electricity annually, equating to roughly 7% of Resilient’s energy usage.