Tesla Installs World's Largest Battery in Australia

After a competitive bidding process that ended in July, the Australians agreed to the deal, and in late September, Tesla formally signed up to build a 100-megawatt storage system — essentially, the world's biggest lithium-ion battery — and connect it to theHornsdale Wind Farm, an array of 99 wind turbines north of Jamestown in South Australia.

Sure enough, Musk didn't have to pick up the cost of the project, reportedly$50 millionin U.S. dollars. Last week, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill announced that the storage system had been fully installed, more than a month ahead of the deadline, and would be energized within days for testing.

But this is a bigger deal than just a successful wager. As Musk explained in avideoin October, the system installed in South Australia is three times bigger than the previous record-holder, a30 MW battery systemunveiled back in February at a utility substation in Escondido, California.

The advent of large-scale battery storage has the potential to solve a problem that hinders the advance of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, because it can help tosmooth out dips in supplythat occur when the wind dies down or the weather turns cloudy. (Here's a2010年的报告from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the importance of storage capacity.) And having battery storage also could help to prevent blackouts such asthe massive outage that hit South Australia in September 2016, after tornadoes damaged power lines and caused the grid to malfunction.

When contacted by email, Tesla's media operation declined to answer a list of questions or make any on-the-record statements. But the company did confirm some information about the battery project.

While everyone is calling it a big battery, the 100 MW Tesla storage system — which can provide 129megawatt-hoursof electricity, enough electricity to temporarily power 30,000 homes — actually isn't a single unit.

Instead, it's composed of hundreds of connected, modular TeslaPowerpacks, built at Tesla's factory in Sparks, Nevada, which stand 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall and weigh 3,575 pounds (1,622 kilograms) each. The Powerpacks contain smaller battery pods, based upon the same technology used in Tesla'sModel Selectric car, as well as a thermal control system and hundreds of sensors that monitor performance, according toTesla's website. There's also an integrated inverter, to convert the direct current stored in the batteries to the alternating current that goes into the utility system. Each Powerpack can supply 210 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Tesla's Powerpack system is designed to be flexible and scalable, so that the same units can be used to provide power for a few small businesses or, in larger configurations, serve as a backup system for a public utility, according to the website.

As for the newly installed Tesla system in South Australia, the most important innovation is the sheer scale of the project, according to Tony Wood, a former Clinton Administration energy official who now is director of the energy program at the Grattan Institute, an Australian public policy think-tank.

“我们will learn a lot over the coming Australian summer as to what role battery technology can play in the accelerating transition from thermal power plants to wind and solar," Wood writes in an email.

长期的实践potential for battery storage — whether it can help drive a transition to renewable energy, or whether it mostly will be useful for blackout prevention — still remains to be explored. "I don't think anyone really knows as yet," Wood says who notes that battery storage currently remains more expensive thanpumped hydro, which uses reservoirs of water as a storage medium. "Economics of scale and other cost-reducing elements are still unclear. That is one reason why this project and others like it are so important and exciting."

Jason Burwen, policy and advocacy director of theEnergy Storage Association, says:

"Tesla's project demonstrates three key things. First, battery storage can be deployed on the grid at large scales in very short timeframes that no other resource can match — and this 'just-in-time' capacity provides enormous flexibility in grid planning. While Tesla did this in record time in Australia, it comes on the heels of similar battery projects in California that took only four to six months from contract approval to in service — so this isn't just a one-off. Second, battery storage is here and ready for grid service today. This is not some 'technology of the future,' but rather a current grid solution whose costs are declining rapidly and whose performance is increasing steadily. Third, battery storage is something that everyone gets excited by, regardless of political affiliation. There are few things that unite folks in energy, but it seems clear to me that storage does."