Tesla Completes World's Largest Battery Project In Half the Time Promised (engadget.com)

Rei writes: Tesla announced the completion of the world's largest battery -- a 100 MW/129 MWh wind-power backup system for 30,000 homes in South Australia. Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth, the $50 million project had garnered press due to Elon Musk's Twitter boast that it would be completed within 100 days of the contract signing or it would be free. In the end, Tesla took it up a notch: the battery was finished 55 days from the date of contract signing and 99 days from the date of Musk's boast itself.

Comments

I'm actually impressed

[Baron_Yam]

I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.

I'm now assuming instead that there was a huge loss involved here in order to move and install the required hardware in such a short time, just to prove the point it was possible and would actually work, and thus make future sales more likely.

Re:The batteries were sitting around

[thegarbz]

Tesla uses different battery chemistry for the stationary storage units.

Not quite. Tesla uses different battery chemistry for their stationary storage units designed specifically for daily cycling, e.g. the Powerwall which has nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry. Additionally this battery is much safer and less likely to burn your house down due to thermal runaway. Oh but it's more expensive.

The PowerPack (which is their grid storage solution) actually uses nickel-cobalt-aluminum, the same chemistry as their cars. This is mainly due to the load expectations being similar. The grid connected solution is not expected to be cycled on a daily basis and the chemistry favours high rates of charge and discharge which is precisely what is needed in order to stabilise a large grid, especially when the primary reason for the design is to avoid cascading failures due to a breaker opening somewhere.

Now that being said the Powerwall used to come in two different versions, a daily and a backup model, the latter having a larger capacity and also the same nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries as used in the cars. Not sure if that is still the case though.

Now that ALSO being said, earlier this year Tesla's car division hired an expert who some people believe are the first step to the company shifting the Car / Powerpack chemistries to NMC as well.

Re:Those are definitely the things that happened

[AmiMoJo]

Which is great, I just wish he would do the other things like make to auto wipers work and stop autopilot trying to kill you. He promised to demonstrate self diving coast to coast this year, and only has a month left to deliver in winter weather.

I have a lot too thank Musk for, but he's far from consistent.