244 Tesla Megapacks in Hawaii

Hawaii

From Electrek:

Tesla is working on a bid to deploy one of the biggest battery systems in the world with 244 Megapacks, Tesla’s latest giant battery system, on a Hawaiian island.  
After a lot of rumors and anticipation, Tesla launched its “Megapack” last year.

It’s the company’s latest energy storage product, after the Powerpack and the Powerwall, and it is meant as an even bigger option targeting electric utility projects.

According to Tesla, a single Megapack has up to 3MWh of storage capacity and a 1.5MW inverter.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked utilities to buy the new Megapack to replace polluting [,expensive] and inefficient peaker plants.

Some electric utilities have started taking Musk up on his offer as we started hearing about several new Megapack deployments over the last few months.

Hawaiian Electric, Hawaii’s biggest electric utility serving 95% of the state, is developing a massive energy storage project in Kahe Valley, O‘ahu.

The goal is to provide both load-shifting services and create backup power to its electric grid:

• Load-shifting: Stores energy during periods of low customer demand, for use during early-morning hours and at night when electricity demand is at its highest. This type of BESS enables the electric grid to accommodate more renewable sources, such as solar and wind, while it displaces thermal generation and helps lower emissions.

• Contingency: Allows stored energy to be sent to the grid as a quick response to an unexpected event such as a sudden drop in energy production from wind, solar, or a thermal power plant. This quick-response capability improves grid reliability and reduces the likelihood of customer outages.

They have been taking proposals since last summer and Tesla’s proposal to use Megapacks for the project appears to be one of the frontrunners.

With a planned capacity of 810MWh, the project would become one of the biggest batteries in the world.  To put it into perspective, it would have more than six times the energy capacity of Tesla’s 100MW/129MWh Powerpack project in South Australia, which was the biggest battery in the world when it was completed a few years ago.