Keen-eyed observers in the United States have taken to Twitter to reveal that American electric automotive and battery storage giant Tesla has rolled out its new Mega-pack battery storage option at the company’s busiest electric charging stations during the US Thanksgiving long weekend.
Tesla first unveiled its long-promised Mega-pack battery back in late-July, the company’s newest battery storage option intended to compete with ever-larger electric battery storage options.
A single Mega-pack has up to 3MWh of storage capacity and a 1.5MW inverter and is intended to provide electric utilities – and windand solar farm operators – with an even larger capacity battery storage option.
However, over the US Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, Tesla took its new Mega-pack on the road, literally driving it around on a long trailer combined with its smaller Urban Supercharger stalls.
The first portable supercharger at the SLO supercharger. It can charge 100 cars! It has a bunch of urban chargers attached to a mega pack. pic.twitter.com/Nv1Q5VywKb
— Brian Swenson (@t3knerd) November 27, 2019
The intent was to provide extra storage options during the busy holiday period, something the company has done in the past, but by deploying diesel-powered mobile Supercharger stations.
Now, however, the company has taken the logical next step and combined its mobile stations with large-scale battery power.
“Mega-pack significantly reduces the complexity of large-scale battery storage and provides an easy installation and connection process,” the company wrote in a blog post about Mega-pack in July.
“Each Megapack comes from the factory fully-assembled with up to 3 megawatt hours (MWhs) of storage and 1.5 MW of inverter capacity, building on Powerpack’s engineering with an AC interface and 60% increase in energy density to achieve significant cost and time savings compared to other battery systems and traditional fossil fuel power plants.
“Using Megapack, Tesla can deploy an emissions-free 250 MW, 1 GWh power plant in less than three months on a three-acre footprint – four times faster than a traditional fossil fuel power plant of that size. Megapack can also be DC-connected directly to solar, creating seamless renewable energy plants.”
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.