Apple introduced Wednesday that it’s constructing a giant battery storage undertaking at a Northern California photo voltaic farm it spearhead in 2015. However what the corporate didn’t share is that the battery packs will come from Tesla, The Verge has discovered.
The newly-announced setup, which can retailer as much as 240 megawatt-hours of vitality, was permitted by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in 2020, in accordance with paperwork submitted final 12 months. It is going to include 85 Tesla lithium-ion “megapacks” and be used to assist energy the corporate’s company headquarters in Cupertino. Monterey County’s planning chief confirmed that Apple will use the Tesla batteries in an e-mail to The Verge. Apple declined to remark. Tesla didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Tesla first introduced the megapack battery system again in 2019. The 60MW storage setup Apple shall be utilizing will not be Tesla’s greatest, although. The corporate has constructed larger general battery storage options in Australia and south of Houston, Texas of round 100MW in measurement. Nonetheless, Apple touted it as “one of many largest battery tasks within the nation” in a press launch, saying the battery system might energy greater than 7,000 houses for a complete day. The Tesla batteries will make it attainable for Apple to retailer vitality generated by its 130-megawatt photo voltaic array on the farm, which known as California Flats.
“The problem with clear vitality — photo voltaic and wind — is that it’s by definition intermittent,” Apple VP Lisa Jackson instructed Reuters on Wednesday. “If we are able to do it, and we are able to present that it really works for us, it takes away the considerations about intermittency and it helps the grid by way of stabilization. It’s one thing that may be imitated or constructed upon by different firms.”
Whereas Apple makes use of lithium-ion batteries in a lot of its merchandise, it’s not recognized to be engaged on any grid-scale tasks. The corporate is reportedly creating a lithium iron phosphate battery for its electrical automobile undertaking, although.
Apple and Tesla don’t have a lot overlapping historical past, although every firm is infamous for poaching expertise from the opposite. Tesla CEO Elon Musk additionally stated in December that he tried to pitch the thought of Apple shopping for his firm again in 2018, however that Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner “refused” to take the assembly.
Tesla is finest recognized for its electrical automobiles, but it surely’s spent years making an attempt to construct up an vitality storage enterprise to go with the photo voltaic merchandise it acquired when it purchased Photo voltaic Metropolis. It has gotten more and more concerned in large-scale vitality storage tasks like Apple’s through the years along with its residence battery enterprise.
Whereas it’s nonetheless modest in comparison with the billions of {dollars} generated by Tesla’s automobile enterprise, the vitality storage division’s merchandise has already netted not less than one different unusual bedfellow buyer: in 2019, Volkswagen introduced it was utilizing Tesla batteries at a few of its Electrify America charging stations.