Tesla Powerpacks in Samoa

I talked here ('Energy Poverty') about how micro-grids of solar panels, battery storage, and a limited village-wide grid in villages would allow millions of people in developing countries to escape energy poverty more cheaply than the traditional way, i.e., building giant coal-fired power stations and an extensive national grid. 

But solar plus storage is now also cheaper than diesel for island grids.

One of Tesla’s earliest microgrid projects with Powerpacks was deployed in American Samoa and now the company deployed two bigger systems in order to help the country of Samoa transition their energy production from the more expensive and polluting fossil fuels, like diesel, to renewable energy.

It started on the island of Ta’u in American Samoa where Tesla deployed a 1.4 MW solar array and a 6 MWh energy storage system with 60 Tesla Powerpacks back in 2016.

Tesla’s energy storage system could cover the island’s electricity needs for 3 days and enabled them to retire a costly and polluting diesel generator.

The Samoa islands are located about 4,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States and the transport of the diesel alone was a significant part of the cost of the electricity supplied to the resident of Ta’u and it wasn’t always a guarantee that the boats would come.

It enabled a new kind of security and reliability to the island grid and now the concept is expanding to other islands in American Samoa.

Now Tesla has deployed two more Powerpack projects at the Fiaga Power Station and the Faleolo International Airport on the main island for a total of 13.5 MWh of energy storage capacity.

[The Prime Minister] added:

“Since the batteries have been running on trial tests, the quality (voltage and frequency) of the electricity supply has been very steady and not fluctuating as before. On least cost operation, E.P.C. is now able to reduce the use of diesel generators from four to two and sometimes limited to one generator during off-peak times. E.P.C. is now working collaboratively with Tesla in taking one step further to totally operate the system without a diesel generator.”

[Read more here]

When the tide peaks, it's not always immediately obvious that it's happening.  Is that wave a little lower than its predecessor, or am I imagining it?  Yet, after a while it becomes obvious that the tide is retreating.  The tide is going out for fossil fuels.  And their decline is accelerating.

➥ The first solar/battery pack combo in 2016 had roughly 14 hours of storage, assuming a 30% capacity for the solar panels.   Presumably this will be adequate most of the time, and the diesel generators will be kept as back-up for exceptional periods of low insolation.  As battery costs plunge, increasing storage capacity will become relatively cheap, and the diesel generators will be turned off permanently.