Grid-scale Battery: The Tesla System in Australia

Remember when Elon Musk offered to build a grid-scale battery for Southern Australia in "100 days or it’s free"? He made good on his bet, installing it on time for the cost of $66 million in December of 2017.

According to a report on its first year of operation, the Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR), owned and operated by Neon, the world’s largest lithium-ion battery energy storage system, with a discharge capacity of 100 MW and energy storage capacity of 129 MWh, located near Jamestown, South Australia, sharing the same 275 kV network connection point as the 300 MW Hornsdale wind farm, saved $40 million in its first year.

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Tesla also says it will recycle the batteries after their 15 year lifetime, planning to recover up to 60% of the materials.
South Australia has gone from less than 1% renewables in the early 2000s to 48.9% in 2016/17 and is expected to rise to 73% by 2020/21, perhaps the fastest renewable growth rate in the world.* Australia’s electricity sector alone is on track to deliver the country’s entire Paris emissions reduction targets by 2025 instead of 2030, five years early.

”Remarkably, the net cost is zero because expensive fossil fuels are being replaced by cheaper renewables.”