Tesla is building a 100-MW battery storage facility in Texas, Bloomberg has reported, adding the company has not yet officially unveiled the project.
According to the report, the project is located some 40 miles south of Houston and is being led by a subsidiary of the EV maker, Gambit Energy Storage LLC. The parent, however, does not seem particularly willing to talk about the project, according to the Bloomberg report.
A 100-MW storage facility could be able to supply power to some 20,000 households, according to Bloomberg, "on a hot summer day".
A few years ago, Tesla built the world's first 100-MW battery storage installation in South Australia. Then last year, the company said it would build an even bigger facility, also in Australia, with a capacity of 300 MW/450 MWh.
The new facility will help Australia as it moves to transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and will have the capacity to power half a million households for an hour, according to a Financial Times report. The company will partner with French Neoen on the project.
"By securing one of the biggest batteries in the world, Victoria is taking a decisive step away from coal-fired power and embracing new technologies that will unlock more renewable energy than ever before," Victoria environment minister Lily D'Ambrosio said, as quoted by the FT, at the time.
At the moment, Tesla has one more battery project in progress, in Moss Landing, California. That facility will have a capacity of 182.5 MW. The Moss Landing installation is scheduled to become operational by August this year. Teslarati reported last month, however, that construction is nearing completion, and the battery could start operating by the end of the first quarter.
Battery storage is gaining increasing importance in the energy transition discourse as it would be vital for the shift to renewable energy. According to the Bloomberg report, Tesla Energy could come to represent almost a third of Tesla's total revenues by the 2030s.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More