Zimbabweans are relying on Tesla Inc. to help them pay
their bills.
Amid power outages of as long as 18 hours a day, Econet
Wireless Ltd., Zimbabwe’s biggest mobile-phone operator, is turning to the Palo
Alto, California-based automaker and storable-energy company for batteries that
can keep its base stations running.
The southern African country faces chronic shortages of
physical cash, so almost all transactions are done digitally, and many via
mobile phones.
“Telecommunications have become the lifeblood of the
economy,” said Norman Moyo, the chief executive officer of Distributed Power
Africa, which installs the batteries for Econet. “If the telecom network is
down in Zimbabwe, you can’t do any transactions.”
The installation of 520 Powerwall batteries, with two going
into each base station, is the largest telecommunications project in which
Tesla has participated to date, Moyo said. With Econet having about 1,300 base
stations in the country and two other mobile-phone companies operating there,
Distributed Power intends to install more batteries and could eventually roll
the project out to other power-starved countries in Africa, such as Zambia and
the Democratic Republic of Congo, he said.
Base stations in Zimbabwe often use diesel-fired generators
as backup, but fuel is also scarce in the country. The Powerwalls, which cost
$6,500 each, will step in when solar panels aren’t generating enough
electricity because it’s night or when heavily overcast. The lithium-ion
batteries can power a station for as long as 10 hours, according to Econet.
They are charged by the sun.
Tesla is working with a number of telecommunications
companies around the world and sees a combination of solar panels and battery
storage as a good opportunity to expand its business in countries and areas
where electricity supply is erratic or non-existent, a company spokesperson
said.
Econet’s mobile-money system Ecocash has 6.7 million active
users in a country of 14 million people. It is used for everything from buying
groceries to tipping waiters. Bloomberg
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