Individuals are increasingly purchasing hybrid cars or all-electric vehicles in a bid to go green. They are also installing solar panels and even windmills at their homes and places of work. But with these alternative energy sources, there is one problem in the power distribution system that cries out for a change. Businesses don’t want to waste power if they are using less than what is being generated. That would be like spilling gasoline on the ground at the filling station after the vehicle’s tank is topped off. While the focus for Tesla is primarily on the company’s electric-car sales (and rightly so, since they account for the bulk of the business), the energy storage segment is a fast-growing aspect of its business. The company is now offering the Tesla Megapack, which is capable of generating 3 MWh and is scalable so users can connect units to create giga-scale power.
Tesla’s Megapack is a new battery product designed and engineered “specifically for utility-scale projects,” the company said in a recent blog post. The energy storage unit is a significant upgrade from Tesla’s Powerpacks, which had a 210-kilowatt-hour capacity. The company announcement said: “Megapack significantly reduces the complexity of large-scale battery storage and provides an easy installation and connection process. Each Megapack comes from the factory fully assembled with up to 3 megawatt-hours (MWhs) of storage and 1.5 MW of inverter capacity, building on Powerpack’s engineering with an AC interface and 60% increase in energy density to achieve significant cost and time savings compared to other battery systems and traditional fossil fuel power plants.” There is a massive backlog for the Megapack, and Tesla says the earliest deliveries for new orders will occur in 2022 and 2023.
For info on another energy storage option, check out the LAVO Energy Storage System.