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: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:26AM
Ease of installation and availability.
It is likely even an "ordinary" electrician is allowed to instal these battery packs.
They do no all have to sit in one (big) room.
Grid-tie *may* require specialist support from the power company, but that's it.
Pumped storage requires massive infrastructure: space, and height, and pumps, and grid-tie pylons or underground works to connect.
Smaller batteries can probably fit inside existing sub stations and even local transformer boxes.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex