Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has been working with Tesla to improve energy storage in California for the past few years, and now one of its projects has come to fruition.
The Tesla Megapack at PG&E’s Moss Landing Monterey Bay, California utility site is now operational, according to the electric utility. This is one of the largest utility-owned, lithium-ion battery energy storage systems on the planet.
The Megapack is a 182.5-megawatt lithium-ion energy storage system, including a total of 256 Megapack batteries from Tesla across 33 concrete slabs.
The huge battery system can store and dole out about 730 megawatts of energy per hour, during peak use periods and times of need, according to a statement from PG&E.
“We are ushering in a new era of electric system reliability and delivering a vision into the future for our customers with the commissioning of the Tesla Megapack system in Moss Landing. We are committed to safely delivering reliable and clean energy in a way that achieves the greatest value for our customers, but we can’t go it alone into this clean energy future. Projects like this require innovative partners, such as Tesla, and PG&E will continue to seek out and work with the best and brightest to provide breakthrough clean energy solutions for our customers,” said PG&E Corporation Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe, in a statement.
The project was dubbed “the Elkhorn battery” because it’s located on the mouth of the Elkhorn Slough on Monterey Bay. It is being managed by both PG&E and Tesla.
Approval for the Elkhorn battery came from the California Public Utilities Commission in 2018 and again from the Monterey County Planning commission in 2020. Construction started in July 2020.
The battery is built from a partnership between Tesla and PG&E, and is just one of nine projects the utility company expects to use to bring total battery energy capacity up to over 3,330 MW by 2024.
