Tesla shifts battery chemistry for utility-scale storage Megapack

In the company’s primary quarter earnings call last month, Tesla executives talked up their strength storage business arm, expressing they noticed it as important as their vehicle revenue. The 3 MWh per unit Megapack product is advertised as a sustainable option to peaker plants and Tesla says it might deploy a 250 MW, 1 GWh power plant on a three-acre footprint with the merchandise.

CEO Elon Musk said that increasing battery storage for both residential customers and utilities was a "long-term alternative to the sustainable strength future." Musk likewise noted that, in comparison to its Powerwall home storage product, the larger Megapack unit nonetheless needed work to make it more cost efficient but that there is a "obvious runway" for improving costs. In the same call up, Musk said the "the greater part of stationary storage" will be iron-founded lithium-ion cells, regardless of the lower energy density.

Analysts have predicted that the storage sector could lean even more on LFP chemistry due to production costs drop, regardless of the lower energy density of the product. An August 2020 Timber Mackenzie article predicted that LFP batteries could overtake NMC batteries for storage applications by 2030, developing from 10% of the marketplace in 2015 to a lot more than 30% by 2030. A separate statement from Roskill notes that Chinese safety criteria for electrical vehicles, along with supply chain constraints for NMC products, could increase LFP batteries for vehicles.

Tesla already relies on LFP chemistry because of its Unit 3 vehicles and indicated at last fall’s Battery Evening that it would conduct the same for stationary storage. Despite their lower material cost, the lower density of LFP batteries presents a problem for car or truck applications because they are able to limit vehicle range. That's less of a concern for stationary storage, specifically for larger utility-scale projects, explained Matthew Keyser, manager of the electrochemical strength storage group at the National Renewable Strength Laboratory.

"In vehicles, you will need that little mass and small volume for batteries, but it’s not as crucial for storage," Keyser said. "You can set the batteries in a container, a storage shed, out in a field somewhere and not have to think about volume."

LFP batteries likewise have a safety advantages, because they might need more heat to attain thermal runaway, when a failing battery cell gets hotter and triggers a chain reaction that may lead to a great explosion. That’s led some storage providers to turn to LFP as a remedy; integrator Powin Strength, for instance, says it uses simply LFP for safety causes and home strength storage producer Electriq Vitality released in November its Electric power Pod 2 residence storage system would use LFP batteries, which it stated are "swiftly becoming the industry normal."

Hanjiro Ambrose, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, said the approach was positive "because it will decrease the demand for cobalt for batteries, which will help get sure there's not really a significant environmental affect and not create barriers to electrification." Overall, he stated, the shift could lower charges for Megapack customers, but also signaled "there's still a lot of chance of transformation" in the lithium-ion battery industry.