TECH billionaire Elon Musk has put his money where his mouth is and has promised to solve South Australia’s energy issues by building the world’s largest lithium-ion battery.
Elon Musk announces Tesla’s plan to build world’s biggest lithium ion battery in South Australia
Mr Musk first expressed interest in the mega-project over Twitter in March, when he wrote: "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free."
Hence, under an agreement made public on July 7, Tesla must deliver the 100 megawatt (MW) battery within 100 days of the contract being signed, or the government of South Australia state won't have to pay the electric car, clean energy and space exploration company. The battery, designed to light up 30,000 homes(or reportedly a total of about 1 hour and 18 minutes of power going at full capacity), if there is a blackout, will be built on a wind farm operated by France's Neoen, parts of which are still under construction. It will be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world, overtaking 80 megawatt-hour facility in California, also built using Tesla batteries.
Musk said failing to deliver the project in time would cost his company "$50 million or more", without elaborating.
South Australia suffered four black-out periods between September and February that caused weeks-long industrial closings and 400,000 homes to be without power. Since it closed coal-fired power plants and moved to being powered mainly by renewables such as wind. The disaster was blamed on supposedly sustainable wind and solar energy production crashing from a peak of 800 megawatts to under 100 megawatts in four hours.
Tesla's 80MW PowerPack substation in Mira Loma, California.
Tesla's Lithium-ion battery, which is 60 percent bigger than any other large-scale battery energy storage system on Earth. The 100MW battery will provide the region with 129 megawatt-hours of energy to be paired with Neoen’s 99-turbine wind farm at Hornsdale, near Jamestown, South Australia.
Around 640 Tesla PowerPack's each containing 16 individual battery pods will charge using renewable energy then deliver electricity during peak hours to help maintain the reliable operation of South Australia’s electrical infrastructure. It seems that confidence helped Tesla win, but typically this kind of project takes six months so we have to wait and see whether or not Tesla can do it.
Lithium-ion batteries have been in widespread use since about 1991, but mostly on a small scale, such as in laptops and cell phones. A typical lithium-ion battery can store 150 watt-hours of electricity in 1 kilogram of battery, representing more than double the capacity of nickel batteries.
For their proponents who have long been pushing for grander use, the success of Musk's big South Australian experiment will be key to greater acceptance. "For lithium technology to take off on a global scale, they clearly need the storage capacity to make sure renewable's can deliver 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Adrian Griffin, a geologist who specialist in lithium extraction.