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Apple said on Wednesday that it was building a large battery storage project at a solar farm in northern California that it spearheaded in 2015. But what the company has not shared is that the batteries will come from Tesla, The edge has learned.
The newly announced configuration, which will store up to 240 megawatt hours of energy, was approved by the Monterey County Supervisory Board in 2020, according to documents submitted last year. It will consist of 85 Tesla lithium-ion “megapacks” and will be used to power the company’s headquarters in Cupertino. The Monterey County planning chief confirmed that Apple will use Tesla batteries in an email to The edge. Apple declined to comment. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla first announced the mega-pack battery system in 2019. The 60MW storage configuration Apple will use is not Tesla’s largest, however. The company has built larger overall battery storage solutions in Australia and south of Houston, Texas, approximately 100 MW in size. Yet Apple touted it as “one of the biggest battery projects in the country” in a press release, saying the battery system could power more than 7,000 homes for an entire day. Tesla batteries will allow Apple to store the energy generated by its 130-megawatt solar panel on the farm, called California Flats.
“The challenge with clean energy – solar and wind – is that it is by definition intermittent,” said Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple. Reuters Wednesday. “If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the intermittency concerns and it helps the network in terms of stabilization. It is something that can be emulated or developed by other companies. “
Although Apple uses lithium-ion batteries in many of its products, it is not known that it is working on network-wide projects. The company is reportedly developing a lithium iron phosphate battery for its electric car project, however.
Apple and Tesla don’t have much overlapping history, although each company is known to poach the other’s talents. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also said in December that he tried to pitch the idea of Apple buying his company in 2018, but Apple CEO Tim Cook “refused” to participate in the meeting.
Tesla is best known for its electric cars, but it has spent years trying to build an energy storage business to complement the solar products it acquired when purchasing Solar City. It has become increasingly involved in large-scale energy storage projects like Apple’s over the years, in addition to its home battery business.
While still modest compared to the billions of dollars generated by Tesla’s automotive business, the energy storage division’s products have already attracted at least one other strange customer: In 2019, Volkswagen announced that it used Tesla batteries in some of its Electrify America charging stations.
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