Clean Technica | By: Giles Parkinson | October 06, 2017:
Elon Musk didn’t need 100 days after obtaining a connection agreement to switch on the Tesla big battery in South Australia. In fact, it took him less than 100 minutes. That’s how quickly the battery was up and running after the ink dried on the connection deal with the state’s transmission company ElectraNet last Friday.
By the early evening, some 300 Tesla Powerpacks already in place were delivering all the power for the unveiling event, stored from the adjoining Hornsdale wind farm, a three-hour drive north of Adelaide.
Of course, it’s not all in place yet. About half is installed – 30MW/65MWh out of 100MW/129MWh it has contracted to build – and it has yet to fully engage with the grid.
But it has only taken two months since Tesla won a South Australia government tender to get this far, and despite some hints that a demonstration was in the wind, the 500 or so invited guests were stunned by what they saw.
“So much has been done in an incredibly short period of time,” Musk said at the unveiling on Friday night. “Talk is cheap, action is difficult … but this it is not just talk, this is reality.”
And, Musk noted – ominously enough for the fossil fuel interests looking on from afar – this is just the start of what he expects will be a rapid transition to renewables.
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