Tesla to build world’s most powerful lithium ion battery in Australia

Tesla has announced that it will be building the ‘world’s most powerful’ lithium ion battery in South Australia. The battery will be installed at a 300 MW wind farm situated north of Adelaide and will provide grid balancing services as well as back-up power to the state’s power grid.

Tesla won the bid to build the battery after the company’s CEO Elon Musk claimed earlier this year that he could fix the state’s energy problems in 100 days, or he would provide a solution for free. The state of South Australia leads the continent in terms of the percentage of electricity supplied by renewables, but has been suffering with blackouts and reduced access to electricity following closures of two coal-fired plants. This has resulted in increased electricity imports from Victoria and New South Wales.

The 100 MW / 129 MWh battery system will be installed as a partnership between Tesla and the French renewables company Neoen at Neoen’s Hornsdale wind farm located 200 km north of Adelaide. Musk said the battery system would be the most powerful in the world by a factor of three. The state’s Premier Jay Weatherill said that Tesla beat 91 other companies that also bid to install the energy storage system.

Under the agreement between Tesla and the South Australian government, the battery is to be installed within 100 days from when the grid interconnection agreement for the project has been signed. Tesla expects the project to be installed by the end of the year.

‘Battery storage is the future of our national energy market, and the eyes of the world will be following our leadership in this space,’ said Weatherill. Musk said that failure to bring the project online on time would cost Tesla $50mn.

The company’s offer for power solutions to South Australia came after the Australian state experienced power system difficulties beginning last year, culminating in a state-wide blackout on 28 September 2016. Tesla recently completed a 20 MW / 80 MWh battery farm in California at a reported cost of $100mn.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in South Australia, what has been described as Australia’s first combined solar and energy-from-waste power plant has been built in northern Adelaide. The plant, managed by the Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority, has been built by the South Australian companies Joule Energy and LMS Energy.

It will utilise unused land to next to a landfill site – the source of the gas – for the solar thermal panels. The thermal energy captured will be utilised in the landfill-gas fired turbine to aid efficiency in producing power. The plant is expected to produce around 11 GWh of electricity per year.