Completed in less than 100 days, does Elon Musk’s
100-megawatt Tesla Lithium ion battery the future of dispatchable renewable
energy power generation?
By: Ringo Bones
The Tesla 100-megawatt lithium ion battery located in
Jamestown, South Australia is the world’s largest so far – m9ore than 3 times
larger than the previous record holder in Mira Loma, California. Constructed in
partnership with the French renewable energy firm Neoen, the Tesla
100-megaawatt capacity Lithium ion battery stores the energy generated from the
neighboring Hornsdale Wind Farm which is owned by French renewable energy
company Neoen.
Tesla’s Elon Musk promised to build the 100-megawatt Lithium
Ion Battery within 100 days of the contracts being signed at the end of
September 2017 or the company would hand it over to the South Australia state
government for free. Completed way ahead of schedule, it went online at the end
of November 2017 running at 70-megawatt capacity. Given that the state of South Australia has
been plagued by power cuts in recent years, South Australia Premier Jay
Weatherill says “South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable
renewable energy, delivered to homes and businesses 24/7.”
With the relatively high initial cost and the initial carbon
footprint in its manufacture the only glaring disadvantages, large-scale
lithium ion battery energy storage systems seems to be the way forward in
current carbon neutral energy generation as a solution to where to store the
unused energy generated by a typical wind farm. With its all-electric truck
being rolled off a month before, it looks like Elon Musk’s Tesla has established
itself as the leading player in the global clean energy production and
transport.
