The new, huge battery-powered power plant built last November by Tesla in the state of South Australia has already solved two serious blackout problems that occurred in the past three weeks at other power plants in a surprisingly rapid time. The power plant is one of the most important new projects of Elon Musk's company, and is the largest in the world: it serves to store the electricity produced by a nearby wind farm of the French Neoen, to be used later when there is little wind or when consumption is higher than the production of wind turbines.
The plant, known as Hornsdale Power Reserve, is expected to go into operation next summer, but its responsiveness and effectiveness have already been tested to provide electricity after two blackouts at two other plants. The last time the blackout affected the Loy Yang plant, in the neighboring state of Victoria: the Tesla plant took only 0.14 seconds to intervene and supply its 100 megawatts of power to the national service. Tom Koutsantonis, South Australia's energy minister, said “it was a record, and domestic operators were shocked at the speed and efficiency with which the battery-powered plant was able to deliver power.” The previous week, the plant had taken over after a blackout of the same plant taking four seconds.
Tesla's battery power plant is particularly important in the state of South Australia, where an electricity crisis is underway: prices have risen – a problem in fact across Australia – and in 2016 a blackout left you without power. 1.8 million people. In recent years, the state has therefore undertaken policies to encourage the production of energy from renewable sources: in the eastern part of the state, several coal-fired power plants have closed, replaced by wind farms, which, however, are not always able to meet the demand for energy, especially if there is little wind.
Musk announced he wanted to build it last March, explaining that if he didn't complete it 100 days after signing the contract, he would donate it to the state of South Australia. The deal with the state government had been successful, and Tesla had met the delivery deadline. Blackouts in parts of the country are recurrent, and hence the need to install a battery-powered power plant to collect excess energy, when a lot of it is produced, and to reuse it when the wind turbines can't do it on their own.
Tesla is best known for making electric cars, but in recent years it has used its battery knowledge to differentiate its offering. The company produces and sells large batteries that can be kept indoors, for example if you have a solar panel system, to store unused energy during the day and use it at night when there is no sun. Tesla has also started experimenting with the same principle on much larger scales: a first power plant that powers thousands of homes has been in operation for a few months in California. The power plant is an important test to evaluate on a large scale the possibility of optimizing the production, storage and consumption of electricity produced thanks to renewable sources. According to Tesla's estimates, when the power plant is in operation it will be able to power 30,000 homes for limited periods of time: since it cannot produce energy but only store it, it must always be accompanied by a traditional power plant.
