Building the Future on a South African Farm
by Jean Philippe Rémy,
2016-02-23 05:47:03.0
AFTER the depressing outskirts of Johannesburg, with shopping centres, garages and the smell of greasy chicken, the Gauteng countryside isn’t all that much better.
At a petrol station there are men in bush hats and shorts, all khaki and autumn-coloured, looking like they’re either going for a friendly day of hunting or organising guerrilla warfare. The poor farm workers look beaten.
In the middle of this world there’s the discreet Letamo Game Farm, turned into a closed domain with homes and fences. Inside the enclave, animals — zebras, kudus and jackals — drink at artificial watering holes.
But the electric fences and 24-hour guards are not in place to prevent the ostriches from escaping. Letamo is protecting itself from the outside, to the point that it can sometimes feel like an autonomous republic.
The houses look identical, painted in the same light brown as the long, dry grass. Not a single black person is to be seen, apart from the guards at the imposing entrance.
In the garage of one of these houses, Antony English is working on a little hobby of his that might make him rich: assembling electric batteries.
He clashes a bit with his surroundings. He’s charming and possessed by mysterious and infectious enthusiasm for his devices designed to store energy, either to move around — his electric Jeep is parked outside his house — or to supply the machines in his home. And there are solar panels to top it all off.
It’s the world of tomorrow. In SA, some people have understood this, thanks to a mix of perspicacity and paranoia. Yet when Mr English assembled an electric car in his garage, his neighbours made fun of him. "Nobody believed in it at the time," he recalls.
That was in 2004. Since then, almost every single major car manufacturer has begun working on electric models.
Mr English drives around in his Jeep, packed with connected batteries stabilised by a system he himself invented. But he also has more recent creations: batteries for homes, called Lite.
His project is an almost crazy challenge to the South African-born, Silicon Valley-based billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk’s Tesla company now includes the Gigafactory in Nevada, which is expected to soon flood the planet with a new kind of household battery. And Tesla is recruiting a team in SA.
Why are these batteries so important? Mr English has estimations on the price of electricity in SA: "It should triple in the next 10 years. As for the price of batteries, it’s going down, like the prices of solar panels have. At one point, the curves will cross each other," he explains.
Mr English says it’s already profitable to buy his Lite batteries and charge them up with solar energy, instead of paying for Eskom electricity.
"In 10 years, you’ll earn money. And you’ll be the master of your own energy."
The mining engineer has called his company Freedom Won. He is looking for a warehouse as the garage is no longer big enough.
Those from Tesla, or Freedom Won, belong to a category of lithium-ion. A whole family, really. Those Mr English buys in China are made up of lithium iron phosphate (LiFe Po4), which could provide the "possibility of more ‘cycles’ (charge-discharge) than other forms of lithium-ion."
The entrepreneur says his Jeep counts about 4,000 cycles, and has already travelled a fuel-free 70,000km. But recently, there have been shortages of these LiFe Po4, because of pollution peaks in China.
"At the moment, they’re making electric buses all over China. They’re making so many that we’re having trouble getting enough batteries," Mt English says.
Still, Freedom Won finds enough for its clients, setting up systems complete with solar panels and the regulator invented by Mr English. It’s not cheap: R313,300 to "say goodbye to Eskom and its problems, forever".
NYTimes.com
Picture: SUPPLIED
AFTER the depressing outskirts of Johannesburg, with shopping centres, garages and the smell of greasy chicken, the Gauteng countryside isn’t all that much better.
At a petrol station there are men in bush hats and shorts, all khaki and autumn-coloured, looking like they’re either going for a friendly day of hunting or organising guerrilla warfare. The poor farm workers look beaten.
In the middle of this world there’s the discreet Letamo Game Farm, turned into a closed domain with homes and fences. Inside the enclave, animals — zebras, kudus and jackals — drink at artificial watering holes.
But the electric fences and 24-hour guards are not in place to prevent the ostriches from escaping. Letamo is protecting itself from the outside, to the point that it can sometimes feel like an autonomous republic.
The houses look identical, painted in the same light brown as the long, dry grass. Not a single black person is to be seen, apart from the guards at the imposing entrance.
In the garage of one of these houses, Antony English is working on a little hobby of his that might make him rich: assembling electric batteries.
He clashes a bit with his surroundings. He’s charming and possessed by mysterious and infectious enthusiasm for his devices designed to store energy, either to move around — his electric Jeep is parked outside his house — or to supply the machines in his home. And there are solar panels to top it all off.
It’s the world of tomorrow. In SA, some people have understood this, thanks to a mix of perspicacity and paranoia. Yet when Mr English assembled an electric car in his garage, his neighbours made fun of him. "Nobody believed in it at the time," he recalls.
That was in 2004. Since then, almost every single major car manufacturer has begun working on electric models.
Mr English drives around in his Jeep, packed with connected batteries stabilised by a system he himself invented. But he also has more recent creations: batteries for homes, called Lite.
His project is an almost crazy challenge to the South African-born, Silicon Valley-based billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk’s Tesla company now includes the Gigafactory in Nevada, which is expected to soon flood the planet with a new kind of household battery. And Tesla is recruiting a team in SA.
Why are these batteries so important? Mr English has estimations on the price of electricity in SA: "It should triple in the next 10 years. As for the price of batteries, it’s going down, like the prices of solar panels have. At one point, the curves will cross each other," he explains.
Mr English says it’s already profitable to buy his Lite batteries and charge them up with solar energy, instead of paying for Eskom electricity.
"In 10 years, you’ll earn money. And you’ll be the master of your own energy."
The mining engineer has called his company Freedom Won. He is looking for a warehouse as the garage is no longer big enough.
Those from Tesla, or Freedom Won, belong to a category of lithium-ion. A whole family, really. Those Mr English buys in China are made up of lithium iron phosphate (LiFe Po4), which could provide the "possibility of more ‘cycles’ (charge-discharge) than other forms of lithium-ion."
The entrepreneur says his Jeep counts about 4,000 cycles, and has already travelled a fuel-free 70,000km. But recently, there have been shortages of these LiFe Po4, because of pollution peaks in China.
"At the moment, they’re making electric buses all over China. They’re making so many that we’re having trouble getting enough batteries," Mt English says.
Still, Freedom Won finds enough for its clients, setting up systems complete with solar panels and the regulator invented by Mr English. It’s not cheap: R313,300 to "say goodbye to Eskom and its problems, forever".
NYTimes.com
Change: 1.19%
Change: 1.36%
Change: 2.19%
Change: 1.49%
Change: -0.77%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: -0.08%
Change: 0.12%
Change: 1.19%
Change: 0.00%
Change: 0.10%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: 0.30%
Change: 0.38%
Change: 0.44%
Change: 0.30%
Change: 0.58%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: 0.13%
Change: -0.51%
Change: 0.00%
Change: -0.33%
Change: 0.17%
Data supplied by Profile Data