The Tesla Powerpack is a rechargeable

lithium-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also s ...

stationary energy storage product, intended for use by businesses or on smaller projects from power utilities. The device is manufactured by

Tesla Energy Tesla Energy is the clean energy subsidiary of Tesla, Inc. that develops, manufactures, sells and installs photovoltaic solar energy generation systems, battery energy storage products, as well as other related products and services to resid ...

, the clean energy subsidiary of

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and trucks), battery energy storage from home to grid- ...

The Powerpack stores electricity for time of use load shifting, backup power, demand response, microgrids, renewable energy integration,

frequency regulation Ancillary services are the services necessary to support the transmission of electric power from generators to consumers given the obligations of control areas and transmission utilities within those control areas to maintain reliable operations of ...

, and voltage control. The first prototype Powerpacks were installed in 2012 at the locations of a few industrial customers. Tesla Energy also offers other battery energy storage devices: the Powerwall, intended for home use, and the Megapack, intended for electrical grid use.

History

As Tesla, Inc. developed batteries for its electric car business, the company also started experimenting with using batteries for energy storage. Starting in 2012, Tesla installed prototype battery packs (to later be called the Powerpack) at the locations of a few industrial customers. The batteries allowed customers to store energy to be used for peak shaving, load shifting, backup power, demand response, microgrids, renewable power integration, frequency regulation, and voltage control. Using these techniques, some early customers were able to reduce their electrical bill by 20%. In November 2013, Tesla announced that it would build

Giga Nevada Gigafactory Nevada (also known as Giga Nevada or Gigafactory 1) is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle component factory in Storey County, Nevada, US. The facility, located east of Reno, is owned and operated by Tesla, Inc., and suppl ...

, a factory to produce lithium-ion batteries, like those used in the Powerpack. The success of the early Powerpack installations led Tesla to announce in April 2015 that it would apply its technology to a

home energy storage Home energy storage devices store electricity locally, for later consumption. Electrochemical energy storage products, also known as "Battery Energy Storage System" (or "BESS" for short), at their heart are rechargeable batteries, typically based on ...

system, the Powerwall.

Powerpack specifications

The Powerpack is a bigger unit with 100 kWh (first generation) and 210 kWh (2nd generation) of storage for commercial and utility grid use. To meet the variety of energy needs in industry, "Powerpack is infinitely scalable", said Elon Musk. The late 2016 Powerpack 2 probably uses 21700 cells. As of March 2020, the 232 kWh version with inverter cost $172,707.

Examples of Powerpack installation

Tesla installed a grid storage facility for

Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of ap ...

with a capacity of 80 MWh at a power of 20 MW between September 2016 and December 2016. the storage unit was one of the largest accumulator batteries on the market. Tesla installed 400 Powerpack-2 modules at the Mira Loma transformer station in California. The battery storage serves to store energy at a low network load and then to feed this energy back into the grid at peak load. The principal way of adding peak generation capacity prior to this was the use of gas-fired power stations. , the 100 MW/129 MWh

Hornsdale Power Reserve Hornsdale Power Reserve is a 150 MW (194 MWh) grid-connected energy storage system owned by Neoen co-located with the Hornsdale Wind Farm in the Mid North region of South Australia, also owned by Neoen. The original installation in 2017 was the ...

in Australia is the world's largest lithium-ion battery.

Market

At the announcement, a larger battery called Powerpack—storing 100 kWh of electrical energy—was projected to be available for industrial consumers, reaching a price point of $250/kWh. The Powerpack was projected to comprise the majority of stationary storage production at

Gigafactory 1 Gigafactory Nevada (also known as Giga Nevada or Gigafactory 1) is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle component factory in Storey County, Nevada, US. The facility, located east of Reno, is owned and operated by Tesla, Inc., and suppl ...

while Powerwall would play a smaller part, giving Tesla a

profit margin Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue. \text = = There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin. * Gross Pro ...

of 20 percent.

Price tendency

In September 2016, Tesla priced the Powerpack at $445/kWh, and a system with 200 kWh of energy and 100 kW of peak power was the cheapest available priced at $145,100. A bi-directional 250 kW inverter costs $52,500. By October 2016, a limited system of Powerpack 2 cost $398/kWh. A 22 MWh system can cost €15 million.

Volume tendency

Musk predicted in 2016 that the utility power will need to increase to supply more electric vehicles, eventually reaching an equilibrium with about 1/3 of power coming from distributed energy and 2/3 from utilities. Battery storage is one of the ways to mitigate the increasing

duck curve The duck curve is a graph of power production over the course of a day that shows the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production. Used in utility-scale electricity generation, the term was coined in 2012 by the Cali ...

, particularly in California.

Competition

BYD's energy storage system is another competitor of Tesla's Powerpack.

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

installed this system, which has 5 megawatt-hour (MWh) capacity—enough to power 2,500 homes—in September 2014. BYD is a large supplier of rechargeable batteries, and is also known for its leading position in electric buses. Sonnen and AutoGrid collaborated on combining house batteries into a large-scale utility-level grid storage system. Eos claimed a battery price of $160/kWh in 2017, before the cost of integration by Siemens.

References

External links

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Why Tesla is backing batteries
BBC
2015 Conference call with Elon MuskWhole transcript, subscribed.
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{{Tesla Motors Powerpack Grid energy storage Lithium-ion batteries Products introduced in 2012 2012 in technology