Elon Musk: Tesla to build new battery factory in Shanghai

Tesla has announced the opening of a new production facility in California to manufacture Megapacks – utility-scale energy storage systems. The company claims it will break new ground in “modular energy storage systems” that are end-to-end prefabricated, making installation and commissioning much simpler.

The huge battery packs, called Megapacks, are about 1m tall and 3m long and can store 3 megawatt hours of energy each. Tesla says installing them is 10 times faster than current systems, which have until now been built using smaller, individual battery banks called Powerpacks.

These new, larger batteries are aimed at helping electric utilities cope with the intermittency of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. They store excess energy produced when the sun shines or the wind blows, for use when it doesn’t.

The Megapacks are assembled on site and come fully equipped with “battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls,” the company said in a statement. “Each Megapack comes from the factory fully assembled with up to 3 megawatt hours (MWhs) of storage and 1.5 MW of inverter capacity, building on Powerpack’s engineering with an AC interface and 60% increase in energy density”.

The new factory has been built in partnership with energy utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which aims to create 3,000 MW of energy storage in California by 2024. Tesla has also signed up with a range of global utility providers, particularly in developing nations where grids are still being built. Megapacks have already been deployed successfully in Samoa and American Samoa.

Tesla has quite a track record with big batteries, having built the world’s largest lithium-ion battery in just 100 days for South Australia’s wind energy giant, Hornsdale in 2017. The company has also installed batteries at various locations globally to support energy grids and provide backup systems for buildings such as hospitals.

Tesla is not alone in developing utility-scale energy storage solutions. A start-up called Energy Vault recently secured $110m to develop vertical gravity-storage towers made of concrete blocks. The company believes this technology could compete with lithium-ion batteries – the traditional storage solution – at a cost of $150/MWh, according to CEO Robert Piconi.



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