Dec 2, 2017
Tesla, the US technology giant, has started up the world’s largest battery and plugged it into South Australia’s power grid.
Being one of the world’s biggest coal exporters, Australia has also long been seen as one of the world’s worst polluters.
South Australia is scrapping its coal-fired power stations and switching to renewable energy.
Al Jazeera’s Hannah Hoexter reports.
Source: Elon Musk’s Tesla to build world’s largest battery in Australia
phys.org
Elon Musk’s Tesla will build what the maverick entrepreneur claims is the world’s largest lithium ion battery within 100 days, making good on a Twitter promise to ease South Australia’s energy woes.
Billionaire Musk tweeted an offer to help build a battery farm in March after South Australia was hit with a total blackout when an “unprecedented” storm wrecked power transmission towers in 2016.
“This system will be three times more powerful than any system on Earth,” Musk told reporters in the state capital Adelaide.
Tesla has built the world’s current largest battery, which came online in California in December, Musk said, adding that the South Australian battery would be 100 megawatts—enough to power 30,000 homes.
“This is not a minor foray into the frontier… I’m pretty darn impressed with South Australia willing to do a project of this magnitude that is beyond anything else in the world,” Musk said.
“That takes a lot of gumption… I do see this as something that the world will look at as an example.”
The battery will be built in Jamestown, 230 kilometres (143 miles) north of Adelaide and will be paired with a nearby wind farm run by Neoen, a French renewable energy company, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said.
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