Tesla’s Megapack is powering Harmony Energy Income Trust’s Pillswood project. It is considered Europe’s new largest Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) by capacity. It is located in Cottingham, East Yorkshire, UK.
It has been successfully energized and will now “provide critical balancing services“ to the electricity grid network, as well as enable further replacement of fossil fuel power plants with renewable energy. According to Harmony Energy Limited, the Pillswood project can store up to 196 MWh of energy and has a power output of up to 98 MW, which means a two-hour power supply at full power (or longer at lower power).
Furthermore, BESS consists of Tesla Megapack blocks (about 3 MWh each), which once again shows us how big an impact Tesla has in Europe – not only in the car business but also in electricity generation. Besides batteries, Tesla provided also its Autobidder trading platform. “The project will be operated through Autobidder, Tesla’s algorithmic trading platform, which has demonstrated a strong track record over the past two years in managing the Holes Bay and Contego projects, two existing battery storage projects also developed by Harmony Energy Limited in conjunction with FRV.”
Bitter battery systems
Considering that 196 MWh is the largest BEES in Europe and that in several other countries there are several times bigger battery systems, Europe still has a lot to do. Harmony Energy Limited intends to deploy five more similar projects in 2023, most likely also in partnership with Tesla, which indicates that the BEES market is quickly growing. It’s noteworthy that according to Harmony Energy, the project was not supported by taxpayer subsidy.
According to Peter Kavanagh, Harmoney Energy Director, “The completion and energisation of the Pillswood scheme, the largest of its kind in Europe by energy capacity, is a significant milestone for Harmony Energy Income Trust, being the first of six similar projects the Trust intends to deliver in the coming year.” Tesla is quickly becoming the largest battery energy storage system provider globally and soon will accelerate thanks to the all-new Megapack Factory in Lathrop, California. It’s expected that its output of Megapack systems might reach 40 GWh annually. The site in Lathrop is pretty big as it’s envisioned for an annual output of 40 GWh of Tesla Megapack systems.
A single Megapack container has a capacity of about 3 MWh, plus all necessary power electronics. At 40 GWh, Tesla should be able to produce more than 13,000 Megapacks per year. That’s an order of magnitude increase compared to its 2021 output.