Tesla Megapack project becomes Europe’s biggest battery

A new Tesla Megapack project has become Europe’s biggest battery system capable of backing up power to around 300,000 UK homes for two hours.

Megapack has quickly emerged as the leading battery system for large utility-scale energy storage systems.

It helped Tesla’s energy division accelerate storage deployment, and the company has now built an impressive backlog of orders.

But Tesla is now working faster than ever through its backlog with 42 Megapacks per week produced at Gigafactory Nevada, in addition to the new Megafactory in California recently coming online and trying to ramp up to an ambitious capacity of 40 GWh of Megapacks per year.

The new output is resulting in more projects coming online like this 196 MWh battery system, the Pillswood Project, near Hull in the UK.

Harmony Energy Limited, the project developer, announced that they completed the installation of the Tesla Megapacks and brought the project online – becoming what they believe to be the largest battery system in Europe:

The project will provide critical balancing services to the GB electricity grid network whilst also enabling the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Tesla has been deeply involved in the project and managed the installation.

Harmony also confirmed that the project will be operated with Tesla’s Autobidder software:

The project will be operated through Autobidder, Tesla’s algorithmic trading platform, which has demonstrated a strong track record over the past two years in managing the Holes Bay and Contego projects – two existing battery storage projects also developed by Harmony Energy Limited in conjunction with FRV.

In 2020, Electrek spotted a previously unknown new product from Tesla: Autobidder.

It’s a real-time trading and control platform for energy assets like Tesla’s Powerpacks, Powerwalls, and Megapacks, optimized through machine learning to better use and more directly monetize the assets.

As of last year, Tesla Autobidder had over 1.2 GWh of energy storage under management, and it has been adding capacity fast.

Tesla Energy, the company’s energy division deploying stationary energy storage and solar power, is having record quarters one after the other.

Last quarter, Tesla deployed a record high of 2.1 GWh in battery capacity – mostly driven by Megapack growth. The record is expected to be broken again shortly thanks to the new capacity at the Megafactory.