Late last year, Tesla turned on the world’s biggest lithium ion battery (Hornsdale Power Reserve) in South Australia (which takes care of the unstable power grid for the first day of summer). The Hornsdale Power Reserve is made up of mass amounts of Tesla Powerpacks, each containing 16 “battery pods” somewhat similar to the ones used in Tesla’s Model S car. Neoen, (one of the world’s leading independent producers of renewable energy located in Paris, France) the owner of the battery system, released a new report for the first full year of operation and revealed that the energy storage system saved about $40 million over the last 12 months. Tesla last year described the usefulness of the system “It will help solve power outages, reduce intermittencies and manage summertime peak load to support the reliability of South Australia’s electrical infrastructure, providing enough power for more than 30,000 homes—approximately equal to the amount of homes that lost power during the blackout period last year.”
Here are the key findings from the Aurecon Hornsdale Power Reserve Impact Study 2018 report:
- Has contributed to the removal of the requirement for a 35 MW local Frequency Control Ancillary Service (FCAS), saving nearly $40 million per year in typical annual costs
- Has reduced the South Australian regulation FCAS price by 75% while also providing these services for other regions
- Provides a premium contingency service with response time of less than 100 milliseconds
- Helps protect South Australia from being separated from the National Electricity Market
- Is key to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) and ElectraNet’s System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) which protects the SA-VIC Heywood Interconnector from overload
Back to the Technology News Main Page
