Elon Musk ends 2017 on the positive note, the engineer and inventor has kept another his promise and finished building the world’s biggest battery in under 100 days.
Tesla founder made a promise to help South Australia with the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage, he kept he promise even faster than a schedule set. South Australia suffered from blackouts due to power outages, in March, Elon Musk decided to help with it.
The huge unbelievable battery offers ‘system security services’ – that’s backup power – to around 30,000 homes in South Australia, about the same number of homes as were affected by a long blackout in September 2016.
In March, prior to starting the building, Elon Musk gave his assurances to the Australian state back after Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, said it could provide South Australia with the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage it needed to solve its power woes within 100 days of a contract being signed.
He had such confidence in his company that he guaranteed fellow billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes that if it wasn’t done in that time, it’d be free. The contract was signed on September 29 – and Musk proves he is a man of his word.
The South Australia now has the world’s largest lithium-ion battery, which is designed to store renewable energy gathered from wind farms and send it to the power grid when it’s needed.
Tesla’s battery becomes a reality
Tesla’s Powerpack system has now been installed and connected to the French renewable energy company Neoen’s Hornsdale windfarm, which is north of Adelaide. Tests will now be run on the battery to make sure that it meets regional and national regulatory requirements.
The huge Australian battery is set to be launched by local Premier Jay Weatherill as well as representatives from Tesla and Neoen next week. Mr Weatherill praised the battery as an excellent solution, stressing 100MW battery has “put South Australia and Jamestown on the map as a world leader in renewable energy”.
