Batteries that big are BIG
This is the world's biggest battery, near Jamestown north of Adelaide, South Australia.
It's 139 megawatt hours storage and can deliver power at 100 megawatts. So at full delivery, it could supply power for about an hour and 20 minutes. For a size comparison, you can see a car parked to the right.
South Australia (pop about 1.4 million) requires about 3000 megawatts in the middle of summer, so even the world's biggest battery would need to be 30 times larger to supply the whole state (for just an hour and 20 minutes!). It performs a very important function though - because it can be switched on in seconds, it provides a very stable back up for the grid if there is a big power failure elsewhere, and it has brought down the cost of providing peaking power to the interstate grid by a BIG margin. Powering up a steam generating plant can take several hours from cold. And even peaking turbine or diesel generators can take some minutes to start and bring on line.
And it's not just the battery that's big - you have to charge it from something. You can see the associated wind farm in the distance, and that's BIG too. The battery can also buy charging power off the grid at off-peak times too.
The cost - $90 million Aussie Dollars - about $US 65 million. It is expected to pay for itself in 3–4 years.
It's been so successful that another smaller 30 megawatt hour battery has been built near Whyalla to the west, and a third battery is planned for the south east of the state.
This huge battery has been so successful at stabilizing South Australia's power grid and reducing the cost of peak power previously bought from interstate suppliers at "rip-off" prices, they are expanding it from 139 MwH to 170 MwH.
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