Support CleanTechnica's work througha Substack subscription,on Patreon, oron Stripe. Help us produce all of thehigh-quality, original content we publish week after weekdespite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.South Africa went through a rough patch a couple of years ago when the country’s available electricity generation capacity was not sufficient to meet demand. This resulted in South Africa’s electric utility company, Eskom, implementing an electricity rationing schedule, infamously known as load shedding. This led to many homes and businesses rushing to install solar and battery backup systems to cushion themselves from load shedding.
South Africans went solar in a big way, resulting in over 8.3 GW of solar PV being installed by homes and businesses. On the utility solar side of things, installed solar PV capacity increased to 2.8 GW. So homes and businesses did the heavy lifting in terms of accelerating the adoption of solar in South Africa. That means several hundreds of thousands of solar systems are playing a crucial role in South Africa’s energy mix.
Plentify is a South African energy technology company that has been optimising energy usage for homes and businesses. Plentify is well known for its SolarBot and HotBot controllers. According to Plentify’s website, the SolarBot is a smart companion to solar and hybrid inverters. It is essentially an intelligent controller for a home solar and battery system that maximises solar self consumption. It works by analysing weather, load shedding schedules, and human behavioural data.
The HotBot is an intelligent controller that trains electrical water heaters (geysers) to use less energy. It gives users hot water when they want it and saves them money through optimising energy usage when users don’t need to use hot water. Now the company wants to unlock more value for homes that have gone solar in South Africa via a virtual power plant (VPP) partnership with Deye.
Plentify was recently appointed as the exclusive Virtual Power Plant (VPP) partner for Deye in South Africa, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of residential solar inverters and batteries, creating the foundation for what is expected to become Africa’s largest residential Virtual Power Plant.
Plentify says this partnership will enable more than 160,000 Deye residential batteries already installed across South Africa to be intelligently coordinated through Plentify’s Virtual Power Plant platform, creating an aggregated distributed energy resource with approximately 2.7 GWh of controllable capacity.
This is really cool. 160,000 is a significant number and this VPP can really add value to the South African energy landscape. Jon Kornik, CEO and cofounder of Plentify, says: “With approximately 2.7 GWh of existing battery capacity, this partnership represents almost twice the capacity of Eskom’s current 1.4 GWh Battery Energy Storage Programme — a multi-billion rand, multi-year infrastructure investment. It shows how distributed energy resources can complement traditional infrastructure investments by rapidly unlocking value at scale from assets that are already in place.”
Colin Chang, Deye Cloud Director, shares that: “South Africa holds an irreplaceable core strategic position in Deye’s global layout. Its unique market characteristics and transformative potential make it a key benchmark market for Deye’s business innovation and expansion across emerging economies. Over the past five years, we’ve built one of the country’s largest residential energy storage footprints, creating the scale needed to support a national Virtual Power Plant. We’ve successfully deployed Virtual Power Plant programmes in mature energy markets, including Australia and France. Those deployments have given us valuable operational experience in orchestrating distributed residential batteries at scale, and we’re excited to bring those learnings to South Africa through our partnership with Plentify. Our experience has shown that success depends on combining proven global technology with deep local market expertise. As a recognised leader in residential VPPs in South Africa, Plentify’s understanding of the local energy system, its proven work with utilities and municipalities, and its residential VPP capability made it the natural partner to help unlock the full value of our installed base.”
Jon Kornik adds that: “South Africa’s energy transition has been unique, driven largely by extreme load shedding. The result of this is that batteries are included with more than 90% of solar systems, a greater proportion than almost anywhere in the world, but are sitting idle for large portions of the day – especially now that load shedding has receded.”
Plentify says by securely coordinating thousands of distributed batteries as a single VPP, the partnership enables stored energy to be managed more intelligently, helping balance electricity demand, strengthen grid resilience, and create additional value for participating homeowners.
This is a very positive and progressive development for South Africa. As municipalities, utilities, and policymakers seek more flexible ways to modernise South Africa’s electricity system, virtual power plants are increasingly recognised internationally as a cost-effective alternative to building new grid infrastructure. The partnership demonstrates how existing distributed energy resources can be orchestrated to improve grid stability while supporting South Africa’s broader energy transition.
Plentify, the pioneering South African electrotech company, using AI-fueled hardware and software to connect home appliances to cheaper, cleaner energy, also recently raised an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The round brought its total capital raised to date to nearly $15 million. Plentify says the raise marks a major milestone in the company’s journey from rapid early-stage growth to global expansion, reinforcing investor confidence in its team, technology, and strategy at a time when venture capital funding in the climate tech sector remains highly competitive. The round was led by Secha Capital, Buffet Investments, and a South African family office, with participation from existing investors E3 Capital and Fireball Capital and new backers Endeavor South Africa’s Harvest Fund and Satgana.
I am really excited about this. We are used to hearing a lot about the progress and achievements of VPPs from overseas — from the likes of Tesla, Sunrun, and others and just how much of an impact they are making. It’s great to see these kinds of VPPs are coming to South Africa through this partnership between Plentify and Deye.
Sign up for
CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up forour daily newsletter, andfollow us on Google News!Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast?
Contact us here.Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up forour weekly one on top stories of the weekif daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy
here.CleanTechnica's Comment Policy