Tesla has been busy building a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) and Switchyard at Giga Texas for several months. With the massive size of the factory, its solar rooftop, and the fact that everything is bigger in Texas we were expecting the BESS to big. Thanks to newly discovered filings, we now know just how big it will be.
According to filings with the Public Utility Commission of Texas discovered by drone pilot Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), the Giga Texas BESS will of course feature Tesla Megapacks, but we now know it will have 68 of them (surprisingly not 69, knowing Elon Musk). The filings also reveal each Megapack will have approximately 2 Megawatts (MW) of power capacity. Add it all up and the Giga Texas BESS will have approximately 131MW of power capacity with 262 Megawatt-hours (MWh) of power storage capacity.
This will make the Giga Texas BESS the largest installation in Texas, and one of the largest in the US. In 2021 Tesla subsidiary Gambit Energy Storage LLC built a 100MW battery storage project in Angleton, about 40 miles outside of Houston. That site features Tesla’s older Megapacks that have 1.25MW of power capacity, so even though the Angleton BESS has more Megapacks (81) than Giga Texas, it has less power storage capacity at 200MWh.
As pointed out by Tegtmeyer in his video, Giga Texas will have 19% fewer Megapacks installed, but still have 31% larger overall capacity thanks to Tesla’s innovation in their Megapack design.
Tesla is still building the BESS, which sits on 53 acres to the northeast of the main Giga Texas building. The facility will store energy generated from the factory’s solar panels and help Giga Texas achieve its goal of becoming a net-zero facility. According to the filing the company is hoping to turn on the Giga Texas BESS by June 15, 2023, but based on the current state of construction Tesla will have to work hard to meet that date.
For a detailed look into the filing, you can watch Tegtmeyer’s video below. You can also check out what the BESS looks like as of May 5 at the 28:20 mark in the second video below.
