South African born entrepreneur Elon Musk is planning to build a Tesla gigafactory in Cape Town to produce Powerwall batteries
If Elon Musk has his way, loadshedding might be a thing of the past.
The South African born entrepreneur has turned his attention to Cape Town, where he aims to build an enormous gigafactory with the intent of producing Powerwall batteries.
The news comes after a report that Evan Rice, the former CEO of GreenCape, has been appointed Tesla’s business development manager for South Africa.
The Powerwall is a home battery that charges with electricity generated from solar panels, and can be used to power one’s home during an outage or even, in sufficient quantity, potentially remove a home from Eskom’s power grid.
According to reports, Tesla has produced its first batch of Powerwalls in Nevada, with stock set to arrive in South Africa at the end of this month.
The Nevada Gigafactory, which costed over $5 billion dollars to produce, is known as ‘Gigafactory 1’, and is the world’s second largest production plant.
Tesla Motors is set to open an office in South Africa this year, aimed at proving energy storage solutions to local consumers.
Our contributing writer Rahul Dowlath listed the unveiling of the Tesla Powerwall as his top tech moment of 2015.
What are your thoughts? Could this be the beginning of the end for the energy woes of South African households? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
Source: TimesLive
