Tesla Megafactory for Megapack is finally being built

Admittedly: The names that Tesla's marketing department comes up with are not exactly original. There is talk of the Gigafactory and the Megafactory and even the Megapack could be called something more elegant. Although the Greek prefix is quite appropriate, as each unit has a storage capacity of 3.9 megawatt hours.

According to Tesla, one such battery - each about the size of a shipping container - could supply 3,600 households with electricity for an hour. However, these are US households, so the stored electricity would be enough for at least twice as many households in most other countries.

The metaphorical ground-breaking ceremony, which should have taken place last year, was held on May 23. It comes as no surprise that completion is planned for early 2025. This roughly corresponds to the pace at which Tesla is launching its plants.

After that, almost 10,000 units per year are to come from this factory alone. That would correspond to a capacity of 40 gigawatt hours. By comparison, less than 10 gigawatt hours are currently installed in the entire Californian electricity grid, which has a population of 40 million and already stores a significant proportion of its surplus renewable energy in batteries. Even here, there is still room for expansion in the future.

This factory, and certainly others to follow from other manufacturers, should therefore help to make more effective use of electricity from wind and sun, as well as from hydropower. Above all, the typically excessive demand in the morning and evening hours could then be absorbed.

Currently, gas-fired power plants are often used for this purpose, many of which could be retired by the megapacks.

And after all, Tesla could have simply called everything "X", but that would probably be too confusing.