Tesla Powerpack

Last week, we reported on Tesla’s Vice President of Energy products Lyndon Rive confirming that the company is in talks with local utilities to quickly deploy large-scale energy storage in Australia in order to address their current energy crisis.

CEO Elon Musk is now involved and they seem to have made progress over the weekend after talking with government officials.
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With the confidence of a well-oiled pizza shop, Elon Musk “seriously” said that Tesla could deliver a more than 100 MWh Powerpack project to Australia in 100 days – or it will be free.

The promise is a clear show of confidence from the CEO in Tesla and Panasonic’s new battery production at the Gigafactory in Nevada.
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At the launch of the Tesla Powerwall 2 in Australia yesterday, Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s former CEO who is now Tesla’s Vice President of Energy products since the acquisition, said that the company is in talks with local utilities to quickly deploy large-scale energy storage.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently declared a national energy emergency as parts of the country were under prolonged power outages due to its unstable grid.
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Tesla recently brought online its massive Powerpack 2 project with Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative in Hawaii and held an event today to inaugurate the facility.

We are talking about a 52 MWh Tesla Powerpack installation (272 units) with a 13 MW solar farm (~55,000 solar panels) built by SolarCity. The system will help the Island of Kauai get more out of its solar power and retire more diesel generators.
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Electric utilities in California are moving quickly on battery-powered energy storage systems and while Southern California Edison is in the lead with several large projects recently, including a massive 80 MWh Tesla Powerpack station, Pacific Gas and Electric Co is also working on the deployment of the technology in Northern California.

PG&E just announced that it brought online a new 2 MWh project in Browns Valley – north of Sacramento. 
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Tesla has an interesting new partner to distribute the Powerwall home battery pack and to deploy Powerpack energy storage systems.

A group of Texas-based entrepreneurs and investors are launching a new sustainable home improvement store chain to compete with Home Depot. It’s called TreeHouse and they partnered with Tesla to distribute the Powerwall.
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Last week, we reported that Tesla quietly brought online its massive 80 MWh Powerpack station on Southern California Edison‘s grid a few weeks back. The two companies are now officially inaugurating the project at the Mira Loma substation today and Tesla CTO JB Straubel made a few comments about the company’s growing stationary energy storage business.
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After announcing the project back in September, we have now learned that Tesla and Southern California Edison (SCE) have completed the massive 80 MWh energy storage station using Tesla’s new Powerpack 2 at the Mira Loma substation.

There are a few bigger projects in various phases of development, but it looks like this one is the biggest energy storage project in the world using lithium-ion batteries currently in operation.
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The somewhat still nascent stationary energy storage industry is still finding its footing and early projects are mainly in remote areas or where energy is expensive.

Keeping with the idea, Tesla is finding an interesting market with breweries and wineries, which are surprisingly energy-intensive businesses. The latest project is a new Powerpack 2 installation at the Sierra Nevada Brewery.
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Microgrid projects powered by battery packs and solar arrays are starting to become more popular in remote areas. It has started to become clear in the last few months that the Tesla Powerpack is lowering the entry price of microgrid projects.

The company delivered another 20 Powerpacks for a project on an island in the Fijis that just won an award for its concept.
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The use of lithium-ion battery cells in large energy storage applications is fairly new and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) wanted to know more about what would happen if one were to catch fire.

Tesla built its Powerpack with safety first in mind and was willing to put its battery system to the test. The company teamed up with NFPA last year and gave them two Powerpacks to set on fire. We got a hold of their test results.
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The small community on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina, where the famous pirate Blackbeard died in 1718, is powered through an undersea cable connecting to the mainland. Ocracoke has often had prolonged outages especially following recent hurricanes or bad weather. The island’s 3-megawatt diesel generator kicks in during those times, but now they want to compensate with a battery system for energy storage connected to a small solar array.

Tesla recently delivered 10 Powerpacks to the local utility, Tideland Electric Membership Corporation, and they installed the 1 MWh system yesterday.
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The island of Ta’u in American Samoa has been using diesel generators and burning over 100,000 gallons of fuel per year in order to supply its nearly 600 residents with electricity. That’s no longer the case and the island is now virtually energy independent thanks to a new solar and battery installation by Tesla and SolarCity, which is now officially part of Tesla since the merger closed yesterday.
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When we reported on Tesla reducing the price of its Powerpack system and introducing its cheaper in-house inverter in September, we speculated that it could be due to the release of the new second generation Powerpack 2.

Tesla has since confirmed that it started delivering the Powerpack 2 in September, but now it is reducing the price of the large-scale energy storage system again.
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One of the many reasons CEO Elon Musk gave to justify the merger of Tesla and SolarCity is to simplify the complicated bidding process that comes with the two companies collaborating on utility-scale solar and energy storage projects.

The timing of the merger might have to do with several of these projects being in the pipeline since a SolarCity official just confirmed that they are “in talks for ‘a number of large installations” big enough to double the current installed capacity by the company.
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Tesla’s battery supply contract with Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) is quickly proving to be accelerating the deployment of energy storage capacity. After announcing a major 34 MWh contract to deploy Powerpacks at water treatment facilities in California last month, AMS confirmed today that it will install new Powerpacks at buildings owned by Invesco.
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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.
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Last week, Vector, a major electric utility in New Zealand, inaugurated what it believes to be the ‘first grid-scale Tesla Powerpack installation in Asia-Pacific’. Tesla delivered 24 Powerpacks for a 1MW/2.3MWh system at a substation in Glen Innes, a suburb of Auckland.
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Update: the article has been updated to better represent SolarAfrica’s involvement in the project

Tesla Energy already has a few on going projects in Africa, including several Powerwalls installed with a solar array by SolarCity at the gorilla reserve of the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the company is also about to deliver its first Powerpack project on the continent.
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Only a few weeks after announcing one of the biggest energy storage projects ever, Tesla Energy won again a massive energy storage contract. The automaker’s energy division will supply ‘Powerpacks’ to its energy storage deployment partner, Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS), for a major new project: a 7 MW / 34 MWh network of battery systems to support water treatment facilities of Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD).
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Everything points toward Tesla ramping up its commercial and utility-scale energy storage business in recent weeks. We are not talking about the Powerwall, but the Tesla Powerpack – 100 kWh stackable battery packs for large commercial projects and grid-scale systems.

Earlier this month, Tesla announced a 1.5 MWh Powerpack system at Brea Mall in California and then a giant 80 MWh project with Southern California Edison.

Now we learn of the very ‘first grid-scale Tesla Powerpacks in Europe’ starting to be installed in the UK.
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