Tesla's giant battery system made a million dollars in two days

Accumulator station Hornsdale Power Reserve production Tesla near Jamestown

In November 2017, Tesla completed the construction of the giant Hornsdale Power Reserve station in South Australia with Tesla Powerpack batteries and inverters manufactured at Gigafabrika 1 in Nevada.

As promised by Ilon Musk, the construction was completed in three months (otherwise it would have been free). The 100 MW / 129 MW · h system was commissioned on December 1, 2017, it accumulates energy from the nearest wind power plant, which is owned by Neoen. With such battery capacity, Hornsdale Power Reserve is now the world's largest battery pack.

This is a kind of demonstration project. Ilon Mask wanted to show everyone in the market that the future is precisely behind the battery storage facilities in the power system. They smooth out jumps in the generated power of wind and solar power plants, accumulating energy during maximum generation and during a low price on the spot market - and feeding it into the system when maximum energy consumption is observed (especially in summer) and maximum electricity price. The graph for January 18-19, 2018 clearly shows how the system accumulates cheap energy - and sells it several times more expensive during peak hours. It was on these two days that the installation brought the maximum profit to Neoen.



In addition, the station quickly responds to abrupt changes in the power grid: for example, on December 14, 2017 at 01 h 59 min for technical reasons the Loy Yang A 3 coal power plant suddenly disconnected from the network. The Tesla station responded to this event in milliseconds - by 4 seconds faster than standby frequency control and ancillary services generator (FCAS) in Queensland. At full capacity from 0 to 100 MW, the station goes beyond 140 milliseconds.



The Australian government has initiated a tender for the construction of Hornsdale Power Reserve after a blackout in the spring of 2016. 90 companies took part in the tender.

Presumably, the demonstration was a great success, because just a few days after reaching full capacity, the station earned about one million Australian dollars (about $ 800 thousand) for its owner. Experts make such an approximate calculation, based on the above schedule of stored and sold electricity.

The system operates on two levels. A power of 30 MW / 90 MWh is available to the Neoen operator for sale in the foreign market, and the rest is used by the state operator to equalize the voltage in the power grid. In the first months, the station was tested, and in the second half of January it worked in full force.


Substation near Jamestown in July 2017, prior to the construction of the Tesla battery station here

The key advantage of the battery system over other power plants is the ability to instantly turn on and off in response to price changes in the spot market. In fact, the station works not only as a battery and a frequency control generator, but also as an advanced trading bot, whose algorithms are designed to extract the maximum profit in the market. This explains the relatively low power station. One of its tasks is to instantly turn on for a few minutes at those moments when a certain jump occurs in the network, and the price of electricity rises sharply above the norm.

The graphs show how the system performs several tasks, while simultaneously working in three modes.



In addition to instant on / off, other advantages of such battery systems are modularity (power is easily increased if necessary) and construction speed. Tesla promised to build Hornsdale Power Reserve in 100 days, but in reality it managed a week ahead of schedule.

But there are drawbacks: the station works only for a few minutes and it is not known how many charge / discharge cycles the batteries will withstand before changing them.

But the market is voting with money for batteries. In Australia, at least four more battery systems are planned to be built: in South Australia, in the Northern Territory, in Queensland and New South Wales.