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Tesla just won a bid to supply grid-scale power in Southern California to help prevent electricity shortages following the biggest natural gas leak in U.S. history. The Powerpacks, worth tens of millions of dollars, will be operational in record time—by the end of this year.
Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries. Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed.
"The storage is being procured in a record time frame," months instead of years, said Yayoi Sekine, a battery analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It highlights the maturity of advanced technologies like energy storage to be contracted as a reliable resource in an emergency situation."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:38AM
hope they don't use the same batteries as Samsung did in the galaxy note 7 :p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:45PM
> hope they don't use the same batteries as Samsung did in the galaxy note 7 :p
Actually they would be a pretty good idea. The problem with samsung's batteries is that the charging circuit isn't calibrated correctly for their chemistry. If there are a ton of refurbished samsung batteries putting them into a new system that is calibrated right would be a win.
That's basically the plan for the worn-out batteries from electric cars - once they get too old (only able to hold ~70% charge) they get redeployed with new electronics into this sort of fixed-location storage where energy density isn't as important.