Foschini Group buys 307 Tesla Powerwalls to fight load-shedding

Retail group TFG — which owns Foschini, Jet, @home, and a range of other well-known stores — has bought 307 Tesla Powerwalls to support its operations during load-shedding.
The company ordered the first batch of 227 Powerwalls in late July 2022. These will be used at 130 of its most profitable outlets.
Another 80 were bought around a month later and are intended for 68 additional stores.
To date, it has installed the Powerwalls at 43 outlets and now plans to fast-track further rollout to other branches.
TFG said the purchases made it the largest South African client of Tesla’s Powerwall.
It explained the Powerwall would allow many of its stores to trade through load-shedding with lights on and point-of-sale devices up and running.
“In many cases, after experiencing load-shedding, it can take some time for our systems to fully recover and having uninterrupted power to our stores assists with that too,” the company said.
TFG also argued that the Powerwalls could be used to help stores bring down electricity costs in areas where tariffs vary based on time of use.
The company confirmed it had plans in the pipeline for installing more inverter-and-battery systems from brands other than Tesla.
Tesla’s Powerwall has seen substantial demand in South Africa since first being brought to the country by Rubicon Renewables in 2016.
The all-in-one backup power system consists of a large lithium-ion battery pack and inverter in water and dust-resistant casing that can be fitted indoors or outdoors, with wall and floor mounting supported.
Users can charge the unit with electricity from the grid or solar panels.
The second-generation Powerwall provides a storage capacity of 13.5kWh, peak output capacity of 7kW, and continuous output capability of 5kW.
That makes it suitable for providing large homes and small businesses with power for several hours.
Powerwalls can also be chained together, allowing customers to scale installations to provide greater capacity and power output for more demanding scenarios.
Tesla also offers a more powerful system for operations with much more demanding energy requirements — the Megapack — which boasts a storage capacity of 3MWh.
This is primarily intended for industrial application and utility-scale storage and has been deployed as part of several countries’ power grids.
In South Africa, the Powerwall was previously listed at a price of R170,300 on the Tesla website, excluding installation.
Rubicon told MyBroadband that the prices of incoming units were pending due to the decline of the rand against the US dollar in recent months.
“Once we secure the rate for the next containers, we will fix the price,” it stated.
The company typically fixes the price per quarter, but with the high exchange rate, it has temporarily switched to per-container rates.