The world's largest battery energy storage station is opened in Australia: the energy storage system uses Tesla batteries

It is reported that on Wednesday local time in Victoria, Australia, one of the world's largest battery-based energy storage systems officially began operation. This energy storage system uses the Megapack energy storage battery series produced by American electric car manufacturer Tesla.

In the future, large-scale energy storage systems based on lithium batteries can prevent power grid blackouts, allowing power companies to store and use renewable energy from intermittent sources such as solar and wind power.

The Victorian energy storage facility is reportedly being developed by Paris-based renewable energy giant Neoen, with partners including Tesla’s energy business and AusNet. UGL, a subsidiary of Cimic Group, is also involved in part of the project’s construction.

According to the project's official website, the electricity stored in this energy storage facility can be used by one million Australian households for half an hour.

On Wednesday, Lily D'Ambrosio, Australia's Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, posted on Twitter that the battery energy storage system in Victoria is the largest lithium battery system in the Southern Hemisphere, which can ensure power supply in hot weather, lower electricity prices, and further promote Australia's massive renewable energy plan. "Victoria, you should be proud of this."

The minister also said that according to Australian newspaper The Age, 80% of the power from the energy storage system is used when the Victorian grid is under high load, which means the system can power about 650,000 homes for an hour.

Although this is not a very long power supply period, the short-term backup power supply service will bring great convenience to a large population.

Traditionally, if a problem occurs at a power generation facility, grid companies often use emergency generators to generate electricity and supply it to power plants, first to restore their power generation operations to normal, and then to restore power to businesses or homes.

In the future, if the grid company needs to deal with power plant problems, large lithium-ion battery-based energy storage systems will keep the lights on in businesses or homes. Of course, these energy storage systems can also be used to help power plants recover in the first place.

It is worth mentioning that in July this year, the first test of this energy storage system in Victoria was launched. As a result, two Megapack energy storage batteries supplied by Tesla caught fire. Fortunately, no casualties were caused. However, the fire triggered an emergency alarm for the spread of toxic gases in nearby communities.

Neoen said that after the fire, they and Tesla analyzed the cause of the fire, and then Tesla took some measures to reduce the risk of fire. Among them, Tesla made some changes to the firmware (software) of the Megapack energy storage battery and the on-site monitoring system.

In addition to its core electric vehicle business, Tesla also has an energy business. However, in recent years, the energy business has not become a profit engine for Tesla. In a recent third-quarter earnings analyst conference call, the company's executives said that the market has seen an increase in demand for Tesla's various energy storage products, including Powerwall for ordinary households, Powerpack for commercial facilities, and Megapack developed for power companies.

In the third quarter of this year, Tesla's energy business unit achieved revenue of $806 million. In addition to energy storage products, the unit also integrates the rooftop solar power generation product business acquired by Tesla in the past.

In the third quarter, Tesla's energy business's revenue costs climbed to $803 million, meaning the business made only a tiny profit. In contrast, Tesla's electric vehicle business generated $12 billion in revenue in the third quarter, with revenue costs of only $8.4 billion.

Tesla also mentioned its energy business in its third-quarter regulatory filing, saying it continued to expand production of energy storage products to meet market demand, including starting construction of a storage manufacturing plant in Lathrop, California.

Tesla also pointed out that the production of energy storage products has also been affected by the global shortage of parts, and for the Megapack product line for power companies, the deployment scale of energy storage systems varies greatly from quarter to quarter, depending on the construction schedule of different energy storage projects of customers.

With the official launch of the energy storage system called "Victoria Big Battery", this project will also increase revenue for Tesla's energy business in the future.