Tesla is Building a Powerful Battery System with a Capacity of Up to 1.1 GWh

Elon Musk is not short of ambition, and for the past couple of months, he and his company Tesla have been working on a massive battery project that has the potential to make even the company’s 129 MWh project in Australia look small.

The company is working in collaboration with PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric Company) to create a massive battery system in California that will have a capacity of more than 1.1 GWh.

PG&E is one of the biggest electric energy companies in the United States. It covers more than 16 million people in the Central and Northern California.

The energy company delivered another four energy storage projects for approval to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) today. Three of these energy storage projects are owned by third parties that are to be connected to the grid of PG&E.

The fourth one is a utility-owned energy storage system of 182.5 MW lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) located in the Moss Landing Substation of PG&E. The battery packs for this colossal project are to be delivered by Tesla.

The battery system is likely to give an output of 182.5 MW in 4 hours. Looking at the figures, it represents an energy capacity of 730 MWh that is equivalent to more than 3000 Tesla Powerpack 2s.

PG&E can also enhance the capacity of the storage system for up to 6 hours for 1.1 GWh. The CTO of Tesla, JB Straubel also announced last month that Tesla had deployed more than 1.1 GWh energy storage. He said that this capacity was “undeniably making an impact.”

In case this new project gets approved and deployed in time to check out its true potential, it is given that it would represent a lot more energy capacity in just one project as compared to the Tesla Energy that has been deployed in last three years since its inception.

As mentioned by Electrek, the battery system according to PG&E would be utilized to “address local capacity requirements and will participate in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) markets, providing energy and ancillary services.” This is on similar lines to the work of the battery system of Tesla in Australia.

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Tesla’s Australian battery project accomplished in reducing the cost of the grid services to 90% that were earlier performed by power plants run by fossil fuels. This new advancement can be considered as the third Powerpack project of Tesla in collaboration with PG&E.

In a conference call with Electrek, Musk hinted at this new project saying, “The utilities that we’ve worked with thus far have really loved the battery pack, and I feel confident that we’ll be able to announce a deal at the gigawatt-hour scale within a matter of months. So, it’s 1,000-megawatt-hours…”