Having built a substantial battery business in recent years, Tesla is seeking to benefit from the global drive to renewable energy sources by offering its energy storage solutions as a backup. The U.S. company in 2017 built the world’s largest lithium ion battery in South Australia, run on a purely commercial basis.
Batteries backup renewable VPPs
Tesla is also advancing plans to aggregate 50,000 rooftop solar systems into a virtual power plant (VPP) in South Australia. Plans for similar VPPs, based on solar or offshore wind, might be in the making for the UK.
In the U.S., Tesla has integrated such VPPs with its Powerwall residential batteries such as in the Green Mountain Power project in Vermont.
Megapacks replace gas peakers in California
In California, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Tesla received regulatory approval in March to build a 182.5 MW/730 MWh clean energy storage system that could eventually be boosted to 1.1 GWh at Moss Landing, California. Construction of the facility, based on 268 Tesla Megapack lithium-ion batteries, is due for completion by the end of 2020.
PG&E pointed out that Megapack can help reduce the need for fossil-fuelled peaking power plants. Placed at the end of the so-called merit order, these power units are only fired up at times of peak power demand when the local grid operator cannot meet demand.
"They cost millions of dollars per day to operate and are some of the least efficient and dirtiest plants on the grid," Tesla stated. By using Megapacks instead, Tesla claims it can deploy an emissions-free 250 MW, 1 GWh power plant in less than three months on a three-acre footprint – four times faster than a traditional fossil fuel power plant of that size.