Hornsdale Power Reserve (a.k.a. “the world’s biggest battery”) begins to charge, and also discharges for the first time on Saturday

If you’re an energy sector junkie, like me, it would have been hard to have not noticed all the buzz surrounding Tesla’s (and Neoen’s) “worlds biggest battery” closing in on its 100 day construction deadline.  I noted about this in yesterday’s post, and there were questions about it at the National Consumer Roundtable on Energy yesterday as well.

This morning we noticed it had started its first serious charging and so thought it would be worth posting this trend from NEMreview v7 showing the period of the charge (a couple hours at a rate of about 30MW) on Saturday 25th November:

We’ll post more when we have time to catch our breath, but wanted to make this quick post now to mark the occasion.

1)  To view in real time

In conjunction with the construction process for the battery, we’ve been running our own construction process – updating the different ways that our diverse range of clients can visualise what’s happening with this battery (and others following hot on its heels).  Here’s an image of the updated NEMwatch widget, sponsored by RenewEconomy:

As noted in the image, for a limited time (whilst we’re finalising the development) we’ve only included it here on the NEMwatch portal.  Feedback welcomes on this (note that we’re already aware of some kinks to be ironed out, like some browser compatibility).

2)  To view a trend over time

I produced the trend above using our NEMreview v7 application, which has been provided as a pre-release beta to all current v6 clients as noted here.

For those (with the appropriate licence) you can view an updated trend of the above here:
1)  In NEMreview v7 , simply click here and your browser will launch with an updated view of the chart above.  You can start from there and configure however you like.
2) For ez2view users, it’s a different link so click here and your browser will similarly launch – with the widget being launched having differences of updating in real time, and including predispatch pricing.

As a quick PS, thought I would also add in this chart from later in the day that shows the battery discharging at a rate of around 30MW for a little over an hour early Saturday evening.

An interesting day indeed…