Gary Zhou 
In South Australia, Tesla’s giant Powerpack battery system, also known as the Tesla Big Battery, has just been extended and is showing record capacity in testing before bringing it online.
The Tesla Powerpack 100 MW/129 MWh project in South Australia offers the same grid facilities as peaker plants but, with its battery technology, it is cheaper, quicker and with zero emissions.
This has been so successful that it would have made over $1 million in January 2018 in just a few days, but Tesla later argued that they weren’t paid adequately because the device doesn’t account how fast Tesla’s Powerpacks are beginning to discharge their power into the grid.
The machine is essentially a victim of its own success, as stated in a study published in 2018 by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is much quicker, more reliable and more efficient than a traditional steam turbine.
The ‘Hornsdale Battery’ energy storage project is owned and operated by Neoen, a French energy company which also operates the adjacent wind farm.
They announced in November last year that Tesla would add more on-site energy storage capacity – increasing it by about 50%.
The extension provides on-site capacity of 50 MW/64.5 MWh-taking the total to 150 MW/193.5 MWh.
The launch had been completed earlier this year and is now being reviewed before it goes live.
Reneweconomy of Australia announced that the battery had achieved a “record flip” from charging to discharging:
“On Tuesday, in the latest series of tests, the Hornsdale battery did a rapid 270MW flip – from charging at 120MW to discharging at 150MW. It appears to have flipped between the two on several different occasions (see graph below) – at least one of which had an immediate impact on the wholesale price of electricity, pushing it down to the peppercorn price of just above $8/MWh.”
With the increased capacity, the battery will be able to provide new technologies, such as synthetic inertia, to replace previously offered only by fossil-fuel power plants.
In switching utilities away from fossil-fuel power stations, Neoen’s large Tesla battery saved more than $150 million over the first two years of operations — essentially paying for itself.
Reported by Electrek.
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