Tesla Balancing The European Power Grid With 18MW Powerpack Station


Tesla and Restore have come together to build a battery station in Belgium which is being used to balance the power grid in times of high demand. At 18MW its capacity is similar to the fossil fuel powered stations which used to fill these supply gaps.

With any renewable electricity source there's a problem with flexing supply to meet load. Wind, Solar and Hydro plants are reliant upon nature to provide the energy which they feed into the grid. Because demand and supply can't be easily matched, electricity companies have had to back renewables with fossil fuel generators to avoid blackouts resulting from over demand. The alternative solution has been to look at ways of storing power when generation levels are higher than demand and then feed it back into the grid when the demand outstrips supply.

In the past that has generally meant trying to create some form of mechanical battery to store the energy for later release. Tesla's Powerpacks allows electricity companies to buy an off the shelf solution to this problem, eliminating the need for fossil fuels or further research into mechanical batteries.

It's likely that the Belgian station will be closely followed by more across Europe as the EU looks to clean up the quality of air in its cities.

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