Tesla deploys large 37-megapack project in Alaska to replace gas turbines

Tesla has now deployed and unveiled a large 37-megapack project in Alaska that will help replace gas turbines with more sustainable solutions.

Homer Electric, a member-owned electric utility cooperative based in Alaska, announced the project, located in the Kenai Peninsula, back in 2019 — shortly after Tesla first unveiled the Megapack.

The MegaPack is Tesla’s latest and largest energy storage product after the PowerPack and Powerwall. It is meant as a major option targeting electric utility projects.

According to Tesla, a megapack has up to 3 MW of storage capacity and 1.5 MW of inverter.

With a capacity of 93 MW, the project in the Kenai Peninsula was one of the biggest announcements at the time, but Tesla has since delivered a larger 1 GWh megapack system.

Homer Electric said the project will replace gas turbines and enable better deployment of renewable energy:

BESS also offers a huge side benefit of opening the door to renewable interoperable energy projects that would otherwise have increased existing thermal generation assets.

The project has now been deployed, and Tesla wrote about it:

Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula has historically relied on gas turbines to distribute electricity to the community for four months a year. To reduce the community’s reliance on fossil fuels to power the turbines, Homer Electric installed 37 Tesla Megapacks, which provide grid stability even in freezing temperatures.

Tesla also released a new video about the project:

This is going to be an interesting project to test the performance of the Megapack in extreme cold.

Megapack enables Tesla to accelerate energy storage deployment toward Tesla Energy CEO Elon Musk’s vision to become a distributed global utility, an effort that could also propel the company’s automotive business.

Tesla is also building a new factory to produce 40 GWh megapacks per year.

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