Tesla Motors Inc. and Southern California Edison on Monday unveiled one of the world’s largest energy storage facilities, part of a massive deployment of grid-connected batteries that regulators hail as key to helping keep Southern California’s lights on and reducing fossil-fuel reliance.
The facility at the utility’s Mira Loma substation in Ontario contains nearly 400 Tesla PowerPack units on a 1.5-acre site, which can store enough energy to power 2,500 homes for a day or 15,000 homes for four hours. The utility will use the collection of lithium-ion batteries, which look like big white refrigerators, to gather electricity at night and other off-peak hours so that the electrons can be injected back into the grid when power use jumps.
Tesla and Edison sealed the deal on the project in September as part of a state-mandated effort to compensate for the hobbled Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. They fired up the batteries in December.
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