Can a 100 megawatt battery solve South Australia’s energy woes?

Tesla boss says it can, backs up claim with “or it is free” guarantee

In September 2016, a massive storm hit the state of South Australia causing widespread power outages as gale force winds caused significant damage to the state’ electricity transmission infrastructure. A subsequent storm in December 2016 and a heatwave in February 2017 also caused major blackouts in the State.

South Australia relies heavily on wind and solar for electricity generation – intermittent energy sources that require back up generation capabilities like natural gas to provide a helping hand.

Solving the intermittency issue has long been on the radar of companies like Tesla who see technology as opportunity to electrify human energy use and reduce consumption of fossil fuels.

Back in March of 2017, Lyndon Rive, Tesla's vice-president for energy products said that Tesla could solve the state’s power issues within 100 days of signing a contract. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, quickly backed that commitment up on Twitter at the time, and added a ‘little’ guarantee:

Flash forward several months and that promise is now ingrained in a contract between Tesla and the South Australia state government.

Tesla announced on July 6, 2017, they’d successfully completed a competitive bidding process and would be building, through a partnership with global renewable energy provider Neoen, a 100 MW Powerpack energy storage system. The system will be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world and would provide enough electricity to power more than 30,000 homes – about the same amount of homes that lost power during the blackouts.

And if Tesla doesn’t get this mega battery built within 100 days of the signing of an electricity grid interconnection agreement? Both the State Government and Tesla say that “or it is free” is now contractually guaranteed.

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