Tesla, a world-renown electric automobile manufacturer along with PG&E recently began the construction of the world’s largest battery storage facility that will be located in Moss Landing (Monterey), California. The energy storage unit will be able to dispatch up to 730-megawatt hours (MWh) of energy to the electrical grid at a maximum rate of 182.5 MW for up to four hours using 256 of Tesla’s lithium-ion (Li-ion) Megapacks. Tesla and PG&E will have the option to upgrade Moss Landing’s capacity to bring the system up to 1.2-gigawatt-hours which could, according to Tesla’s report, power every home in the state of San Francisco for a quarter of the day.
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The battery storage facility will be launched in 2021 and will be designed, constructed, and maintained under both Tesla and PG&E. The construction of the Moss Landing site and other such mega-storage projects around the world shows us that there is a massive shift away from hydrocarbon-based power systems towards renewable generation backed up by utility-scale storage. If the Moss Landing site is upgraded to the 1.2 GW capacity as anticipated, its storage capacity will be approximately ten times larger than Australia’s Hornsdale Power station, the previous record holder and another Tesla project. The next largest Li-ion storage system in the world is the United Kingdom’s Stocking Pelham station at 50 MW.
