Tesla Megapack 2XL to power new giant 877 MWh Neoen battery project

The Tesla Megapack 2XL is going to power a new giant 877 MWh battery project developed by France’s Neoen in Western Australia.

Tesla Megapack has quickly become the prominent battery pack for large-scale energy storage projects. Neoen actually played a part in that.

Before the Megapack, Tesla had the Powerpack, and it was selected by Neoen for one of the first-ever large-scale energy storage projects using lithium-ion battery cells.

The Tesla Powerpack project in South Australia became known as the “Big Tesla Battery” and popularized Tesla’s utility-scale energy storage system.

Neoen owned the project, and it proved to be highly successful and profitable. 

Since then, the French energy company has partnered with Tesla several times again to use its Megapack on large-scale energy storage projects.

Neoen now announces that it again contracted Tesla for a large Megapack project:

Neoen, one of the world’s leading producers of exclusively renewable energy, has been awarded a 197 MW / 4 hour capacity services contract by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) in a competitive tender initiated by the Western Australian Coordinator of Energy. The service will be delivered by Stage 1 of Collie Battery sized at 219 MW / 877 MWh and consisting of 224 Tesla Megapack 2XL units. The project, which Neoen originated in 2021, received development approval for a total of 1 GW / 4 GWh in December 2022. The battery will be located near the town of Collie, on the country of the Wilman people of the Bibbulmun nation, in the South West region of Western Australia (WA). It will connect to Western Power’s Shotts Terminal substation, which is part of the South-West Interconnected System (SWIS), a separate network to the one on the eastern coast of Australia. 

The company specifically mentions the Tesla Megapack 2 XL, which must be the name used for the latest version of the Megapack updated to a 3.9 MWh capacity last year.

If the project is completed to its full approved capacity of 4 GWh, it would become the biggest battery system in the world.

Neoen plans to use the system to provide grid services to Western Australian and allow the region to make better use of intermittent renewable energy generation.