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  • This battery is one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world.

  • In Moss Landing, California, PG&E has been working with Tesla to install its Megapack utility-scale

  • battery storage system.

  • Once complete, it will help store energy for redistribution during off-hours when solar output

  • decreases.

  • California needs generation for our, September, August is our key areas of when we need

  • storage to be able to capture it during the day and then release it in the afternoon, evenings.

  • Even as nations around the world set goals to transition to renewables, demand for these

  • large-scale storage systems is on the rise.

  • The market size of grid-scale battery storage is expected to become a $15 billion market by

  • 2027.

  • Now we're seeing in many parts of the world, in California, in Germany, now in China, mandates to

  • have a certain amount of storage available per unit of renewable energy.

  • If you look at resource forecasts or resource plans, the expectation is there will be tens of

  • thousands of megawatts of new energy storage in just California.

  • Welcome everyone to, basically the announcement of Tesla Energy.

  • Tesla got into the energy business in 2015 and it's betting it will become increasingly important

  • for the company. In 2020, it surpassed three-gigawatt hours of energy storage deployments

  • in a single year, largely due to the popularity of Megapack, like the one being built in Moss

  • Landing.

  • I think long term Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla Automotive.

  • I mean, the energy business collectively is bigger than the automotive business.

  • They have really deep tactical knowledge of batteries, not just the cells themselves, but how

  • to operate them, how to build a battery management system, how to package them well, make

  • sure they're in the right kind of thermal window.

  • The systems have smart technology built into them.

  • The technology and the way the batteries are actually configured is one thing.

  • But equally significant at the moment is how you control them.

  • Tesla has a system called Autobidder that actually chooses what the battery does and when it

  • does it.

  • The amount of data we get from each mega pack is phenomenal.

  • The Tesla product has got a lot of technology built into it.

  • It's really an answer to one of the big challenges we've got.

  • We all know that we're transitioning our electricity systems to renewable.

  • It is the way of the future.

  • We're going to see a lot of

  • these.

  • Energy storage has been around for a hugely long time, but for a very long time, the only real

  • viable technology was actually the lead acid batteries in our cars.

  • The one, of course, that was ramping up during those same decades were lithium ion batteries.

  • The first lithium ion batteries were used in consumer electronics in the late 1990s.

  • We can thank Sony's Handycam for pioneering this innovation for us.

  • Lithium ion batteries are now everywhere, from electric vehicles to our phones.

  • Though there are many other types of batteries in the works, lithium ion is still the most cost

  • effective for utility scale storage.

  • In the past, prohibitively high costs have meant that lithium ion batteries couldn't be used at

  • large scale grid storage levels.

  • In the past decade alone, according to estimates from BloombergNEF , costs fell about 90

  • percent.

  • With the world transitioning to electric vehicles, demand for electricity could be greater than ever

  • before.

  • People are moving towards electric vehicles.

  • Roughly you need twice as much electricity if all transport goes Electric.

  • And you need three times as much electricity if all heating goes electric.

  • This is a prosperous future, both for Tesla and for the utilities.

  • And with the recent failure of the power grid in Texas and brownouts in places like California,

  • energy storage is becoming necessary to keep power up and running.

  • There is a new impetus behind building out a stronger, more resilient grid.

  • We've seen again and again our grid can't handle climate change, can't handle these climate

  • disasters that are becoming increasingly frequent.

  • Tesla built one of its storage systems on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2017.

  • In addition to supporting the SolarCity solar farm, it's added more reliability for the utility.

  • We had our best reliability ever as a co-op last year.

  • Part of running an electric utility grid is you have to always match every second of the day

  • supply and demand.

  • Batteries are amazing at that because batteries are instantaneous.

  • If you look at some of the events for the batteries responded to, it's gone effectively from

  • zero to full output in a bit over 100 milliseconds.

  • And it's just, there's no other technology that can do that.

  • In the U.S. and around the world, more aggressive energy storage policies are being put in place.

  • China has mandated energy storage as part of its effort to reach 16.5 percent solar and wind in its

  • national power targets by 2025.

  • In Biden's recently unveiled more than two trillion infrastructure package.

  • There's more than $600 billion earmarked for climate related policies, and that includes $100

  • billion for the power grid.

  • President Biden has set 2035 as the 100 percent clean electricity date.

  • Just meeting that one's going to be not only a big challenge, but also a market opportunity for

  • all these technologies.

  • Tesla is one of several companies working on energy storage.

  • Tesla gets, and they deserve to get, a lot of attention for their effort to build the

  • Gigafactory facilities.

  • But there's lots of others.

  • There's a whole range of startup companies in the storage space.

  • The majority of grid scale, energy storage, lithium ion battery, energy storage is being built

  • out by utility companies such as NextEra Energy down in Florida, Duke

  • Energy. These are a few of the names that are integrating battery storage into their models.

  • AES Corporation has been working on a number of projects, most notably with Kauai Island Utility

  • Cooperative. In 2019, it completed a 28 megawatt solar farm with a battery capable of storing 100

  • megawatt hours. And it just brought a microgrid online at the island's Pacific Missile Range

  • facility. With the success of these projects, the utility cooperative is working with AES on a new

  • project to combine solar and hydro for even greater storage capacity.

  • It's going to have two hours of battery that can handle the solar output.

  • Well, what's really wild about this one is it's going to also have pump storage hydro power

  • brought in. Pump storage has been around for decades.

  • So it's a proven technology, but linking it into an intermittent resource such as solar is a new

  • thing.

  • Next to the PG&E and Tesla storage project in Moss Landing, Vistra is also building one of the

  • largest battery systems at its natural gas power plant.

  • Phase one of the project was completed in December of 2020, bringing 300 megawatts of

  • storage capacity online.

  • Phase 2 will add an additional hundred megawatts when it's completed later this summer.

  • We need to do everything we possibly can to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.

  • You can't really talk about energy storage without talking about Tesla, which of course is the leader

  • in EVs and also has a big footprint in the energy storage space.

  • Tesla launched its energy business in 2015 with the announcement of a new battery product.

  • So this is a product we call the Tesla Powerwall.

  • It has all of the integrated safety systems, the thermal controls, the DC to DC converter.

  • It's designed to work very well with solar systems right out of the box.

  • People in a remote village or an island somewhere can take solar panels, combine it with the Tesla

  • Powerwall and never have to worry about having electricity lines

  • And for larger scale applications, Tesla developed the power pack.

  • What about something that scales to much, much larger levels?

  • So for that, we have something else.

  • So we have the Powerpack.

  • The Tesla Powerpack is designed to scale infinitely.

  • So you literally make this into a gigawatt hour class solution.

  • In the summer of 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion.

  • The deal was controversial and is still the subject of some shareholder suits, but it drove

  • Tesla to do more in energy storage.

  • Tesla has unveiled several solar roof tiles and has hyped the product, but installations have not

  • grown as quickly as expected.

  • They've had numerous technical setbacks in kind of deploying that product and making it happen in a

  • solution that works at the right price point that's competitive with conventional rooftop

  • solar. But, by and large, they've built the right pieces.

  • They've prioritized it in the right way for consumers.

  • Just recently, Tesla updated the Powerwall 2, doubling the capacity of energy it can discharge.

  • All Powerwalls made since roughly November of last year have a lot more peak power capability than

  • the specification on the website.

  • The energy is the same but the power is roughly double.

  • According to the company, demand has been so high, Tesla is now only selling Powerwalls bundled with

  • its solar products.

  • We will not sell a house solar without a Powerwall.

  • A Tesla Powerwall 2 has an energy capacity of 13.5 kilowatt hours.

  • A Model S has up to a 100 kilowatt hour battery.

  • Powerpack, its smallest utility scale storage solution, has a capacity of up to 232

  • kilowatt hours per unit.

  • This can be scaled up to include several Powerpacks to meet energy needs.

  • Tesla's first major battery installation near Jamestown, South Australia, had a capacity of 129

  • megawatt hours.

  • At the time of its completion in December 2017, it was the largest lithium ion battery storage

  • project in the world.

  • The system charges using renewable energy from the Hornsdale Wind Farm and helped bring more

  • stability to the grid following a significant blackout.

  • An extreme weather event that happened in September 2016 in South Australia that resulted in

  • the entire state blacking out.

  • The response that the South Australian government took to develop and

  • accelerate the energy plan that they were already working on, was really triggered by that.

  • Based on studies observing its first and second year of use, Tesla's Australia battery system has

  • proven to be reliable and has saved the utility company money.

  • That first years performance, we could see that the battery itself generated revenue of $24

  • million. But the saving to the electricity system, in terms of how

  • much more cheaply the frequency control services were provided, was $30 to $40 million.

  • With the success of this project, Australia is looking to bring more lithium ion battery storage

  • systems online.

  • There's quite a few underway now in other parts of Australia and also in South Australia.

  • Another project Tesla took on was in Kauai, replacing diesel fuel generators that were

  • supplying power when solar c ouldn't.

  • In the Hawaiian Islands, one thing was for certain, we had to do something.

  • We couldn't stay on oil.

  • All these technologies, every single one we've done, even the higher priced solar ones, have been

  • cheaper than the alternative of oil.

  • So they've all saved us money.

  • The project consisted of a 52 megawatt hour battery and a 13 megawatt SolarCity

  • photovoltaic system.

  • Kauai Island utility Cooperative contracted with Tesla to purchase electricity over a 20 year

  • period for 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

  • It's a great economic thing.

  • We know we're going to have a fixed price for 20, 25 years on these.

  • Before we had the technology, when we were heavily oil dependent, our pricing can go up 40,

  • 50 percent from two or three month period as we're riding oil.

  • Since the Tesla and AES projects, Kauai Island Utility Cooperative has been able to operate

  • nearly on all renewable energy

  • Almost every day now, we will go six to eight hours at 100 percent renewable working on,

  • we call it inverter based technology here where it's batteries running things.

  • There's not really another grid out there that is doing that.

  • Similar to Kauai, Tesla completed a project on the island of Ta'u in American Samoa, which was

  • previously powered by diesel generators.

  • Tesla installed 5,328 solar panels and 60 Powerpacks and said this would allow the

  • island to stay powered for three days without sunlight.

  • Tesla says it will offset the island's use of more than 109,000 gallons of diesel per year.

  • And when Puerto Rico's utility infrastructure was devastated in 2017 during Hurricane Maria, Musk

  • took to Twitter suggesting Tesla could help.

  • In 2018, ongoing outages left Puerto Rico without power.

  • So Tesla brought in Powerpacks to several critical sites around the island.

  • Another one of Tesla's early projects went online in December 2016 to help reduce Southern

  • California's dependency on peaker plants.

  • In East Los Angeles, the Mira Loma substation has two 10 megawatt systems, which can store 80

  • megawatt hours.

  • The site is comprised of 396 Powerpacks.

  • With the success of these early projects, Tesla developed an even larger capacity solution,

  • Megapack, which has up to three megawatt hours of storage.

  • The equivalent of almost 13 Powerpacks or 30 Model S sedans.

  • Tesla says if scaled to one gigawatt hour of energy storage, that would be enough to power

  • every home in San Francisco for six hours.

  • We're working with utilities, large and small, not just utilities, but also just like microgrid and

  • project developers of all types and building our own projects where it makes sense.

  • And there's a lot of demand for the product and we're growing the production rates as fast as we

  • can.

  • Apple is working with Tesla to build a 240 megawatt hour Megapack at its California Flats

  • solar farm that powers its Cupertino headquarters.

  • Outside of Houston in Angleton, Texas.

  • Tesla has quietly been working on its first site in the state.

  • Once complete, the 100 megawatt system will be capable of powering about 20,000 homes.

  • CNBC visited PG&E's Megapack site in Moss Landing, California, which is expected to be

  • completed by the end of the summer.

  • We're standing at the PG&E Elkhorn Energy Storage Project.

  • It's 182.5 megawatts of Tesla Megapacks.

  • We're next to another very large project, which is the Vistra 300 megawatt energy storage project.

  • Combined, you're looking at 1,930 megawatt hours between the two projects, which really makes Moss

  • Landing, as some would say, the energy storage capital of the world right now.

  • California is the top producer of renewable energy in the U.S.

  • In 2014, the state realized that the renewables were great, but we needed to do something to deal

  • with the excess. So the state started launching its energy storage programs.

  • As part of energy storage, one of our first assignments was to procure 580 megawatts to be

  • online by 2024.

  • It is the glue that holds it all back together, is the energy storage.

  • If you consider how much energy we do use, we're going to need more facilities like this.

  • When PG&E looked to integrate an energy storage solution, it said it received several proposals,

  • but ultimately chose Tesla for this site.

  • Tesla definitely had the most mature product.

  • Their understanding of energy storage was better than the rest.

  • They've already done UL 9540A burn tests on their Powerpack product.

  • For these Megapacks, if there is a fire, it self extinguishes.

  • It's one of the few projects I've ever worked on where this is going to save customers money.

  • While Tesla has been aggressive in its rollout, it is unclear how profitable this business is for

  • them. It does not break out energy storage sales from its solar business.

  • In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla energy revenues were $494 million, while

  • costs were $595 million.

  • But energy storage deployments grew 83 percent from 2019 to 2020, which the company said was

  • driven mainly by the popularity of the Megapack.

  • They've deployed a lot of systems.

  • They've deployed them on time, at a profitable price point where the product operators have also

  • used the project successfully and made money from them.

  • They've built a lot of the right pieces and have a promising play in the energy space because of

  • the battery expertize they've had.

  • And the future looks promising for Tesla and others in the space.

  • As energy storage and as lithium ion and as renewables become a greater make up of our grid,

  • it's going to fundamentally shift how our grid currently works.

  • This is a big opportunity for a wide spectrum of companies who are involved in what's known as the

  • energy transition.

  • There are still a bunch of hurdles to making lithium ion batteries, first of all, while the

  • costs have come down a lot, they are still high.

  • Batteries are the most expensive part of electric vehicles.

  • And similarly, the large quantity of cells in utility scale batteries make them costly.

  • The average price per kilowatt hour for a lithium ion battery pack is around a $137, down

  • from $157 in 2019.

  • The increase in energy density really isn't about how do we make longer range electric vehicles

  • today. It's about how can we make them cheaper by using less materials and getting the same amount

  • of energy from them.

  • And there is the issue of resources.

  • With electric vehicle production ramping up, there are concerns demand will outpace supply for

  • materials to make batteries.

  • Tesla is reportedly looking into changing to a cobalt free lithium ion phosphate battery for its

  • Megapack. The change in chemistry could help cut costs and ease demand for supply-constrained

  • nickel based battery production.

  • There are definitely issues going forward with whether or not there will be enough supply to meet

  • that demand because demand is not just growing in the United States, but growing around the world.

  • I've been working in lithium ion cells for 20 years and I've seen factories evolve.

  • And then Panasonic built the Gigafactory, which is just on another scale.

  • But even this factory really only supplies one car model.

  • So if we're really going to change to an electrified industry, we need something like 20 of

  • these factories.

  • The Biden administration has emphasized it wants to bring mining and cell production back to the

  • U.S.

  • China started to ramp up their mining a rare earths in the 80s and 90s.

  • And because of that supply, the United States actually ramped down.

  • Actually, now we're seeing in the United States, Canada and Australia are ramping up again

  • of supply.

  • To meet the growing demand, new types of battery technology are also being explored.

  • There are sodium batteries.

  • There are salt based batteries.

  • One of my favorites is called a flow battery.

  • One of the huge benefits of flow batteries is that instead of thousands of cycles before

  • degredation, they give you potentially millions of cycles.

  • And for certain projects, energy storage is being done through alternative means.

  • Long duration storage can be anything from things we're really familiar with, like storing energy

  • in hydro systems or pumping water uphill.

  • As the world transitions to renewable energy, storage will continue to play an increasingly

  • important role. And Tesla could become as important of a player in the energy industry as

  • they have in the electric vehicle space.

  • So while we don't really have an idea of who is going to win the day and who's going to be the

  • most successful company in the space, I do think one thing is for certain, and that's that we're

  • going to see a lot more solar and wind buildout, both here in the United States and abroad.

  • Getting bulk wind and solar into the network is what will bring prices down for consumers.

  • And I think that's important.

  • Rather than people thinking it's all about, do these technologies need subsidy?

  • Are they getting a free ride? Actually, no, they're going to enable much cheaper energy while

  • we're decarbonizing the grid, which is hopefully what we all want.

This battery is one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world.

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