Tesla decided to leave its new Powerpack out of its upcoming announcement for the solar roof and Powerwall 2.0 on Friday and instead confirmed the new battery pack in a blog tonight. As we reported in exclusivity earlier this month, the next generation Powerpack, now called ‘Powerpack 2’ by Tesla, features twice the energy capacity of the previous generation – 200 kWh.
The company says that it started delivering the new version last month and that recently announced projects, like Southern California Edison’s Mira Loma substation and the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, will benefit from the new more energy dense stationary energy storage system.
The new ‘Tesla inverter’ also started shipping with the new Powerpack. As we reported earlier this month, Tesla is dropping the Dynapower inverter that it was previously using for its commercial and utility-scale projects and developed its own inverter.
Tesla describes the new inverter as having the “lowest cost, highest efficiency and highest power density utility-scale inverter on the market.” The company believes that the combination of Powerpack 2.0 and the Tesla Inverter is “now a cost-competitive alternative to other traditional utility infrastructure solutions such as building larger substations, bigger wires and more power plants.”
The lower cost was represented on Tesla’s online quoting tool last month when it significantly reduced the price of its commercial inverter by 19%, as well as the price of the Powerpack by 5%. Every percentage point counts when you are dealing with energy capacity at utility-scale.
Here’s Tesla’s blog post in full:
Gaining Momentum with Tesla Powerpack
October 27, 2016
Ahead of tomorrow’s solar roof and Powerwall announcement, we wanted to provide some exciting updates on our commercial and utility energy product, Tesla Powerpack.
This September we began shipping version 2 of our Powerpack system. With a new energy module and power electronics, Powerpack 2 provides twice the energy density and a more seamless integration into multiple levels of the grid. Powerpack 2 is also now matched with a new inverter, designed by Tesla and manufactured at the Gigafactory. It is the lowest cost, highest efficiency and highest power density utility-scale inverter on the market. It also significantly simplifies the installation process of the entire Powerpack system by integrating a number of previously independent components into the inverter itself.
The Tesla inverter paired with the Powerpack 2 allows storage to be available to the utility industry at price points and with functionality previously unknown. The combined system is now a cost-competitive alternative to other traditional utility infrastructure solutions such as building larger substations, bigger wires and more power plants. Furthermore, the Powerpack system interface and software controls give utilities and grid operators high fidelity control, allowing for better energy management and dispatch, which improves grid performance, efficiency and reliability at a low cost.
The benefits of this pairing are already being seen in projects such as Southern California Edison’s Mira Loma substation and the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. The Powerpack systems for these two projects are being built now at our Gigafactory and, when deployed later this year, will be the two largest lithium ion battery storage installations in the world.
And this is just the beginning. To date, nearly 300 MWh of Tesla batteries have been deployed in 18 countries, and we anticipate the impact and growth rate of energy products around the world to be far greater than that of electric vehicles alone. As we continue to innovate, scale and reduce costs of commercial and grid-scale systems, we will significantly accelerate the adoption of renewable energy sources to power our world, ultimately getting us to 100% renewable energy grids.
If you want to install a solar array at your home or business, you can see if it makes sense for your property and if you can be saving money on your energy bill here.
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