Apple’s big battery storage project will have 85 Tesla lithium-ion ‘megapack’ batteries

Apple is building a big battery storage project at a Northern California solar farm, which started in 2015. The battery packs will come from Tesla. This setup will store up to 240 MW-hours of energy, approved by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in 2020.

The big building storage project will have 85 Tesla lithium-ion “megapacks,” which will help power its corporate headquarters in Cupertino.

According to Apple, the battery system could power more than 7,000 homes for a whole day. The Tesla batteries will store energy generated by its 130-MW solar array at the farm called California Flats.

Apple VP Lisa Jackson told Reuters on Wednesday:

The challenge with clean energy — solar and wind — is that it’s by definition intermittent. If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It’s something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies.

Tesla is widely known for its electric cars. But it had spent years working on an energy storage business to complement the solar products it acquired when it bought Solar City.

Tesla’s first megapack battery system was established in 2019. The company also has battery storage establishments in Australia and south of Houston, Texas, of around 100MW in size.