Tesla Motors, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) has been selected by the Southern California Edison for the largest lithium ion battery storage project in the world. The company won the project through a competitive process.
The project requires Tesla to install a 20 MW/80 MWh Powerpack system at the Southern California Edison Mira Loma substation. The energy stored in the system, when fully charged, will be enough to power over 2,500 households for a day or charge about 1,000 Tesla vehicles.
The system will use electricity from the grid during off-peak hours to charge. This stored energy will be used to meet the peak time energy needs of the Los Angeles basin.
Tesla will be able to manufacture, ship, install and commission the system in as little as three months due to the large production capacity of the Gigafactory. Tesla is building the factory in Nevada to deal with the shortage of lithium-ion batteries that was limiting its vehicle production. In Jul 2016, the company held the official opening of the partly-constructed Gigafactory. Tesla expects 31% of the factory to complete by the second quarter of 2017 and the full construction to complete by the end of the same year.
The company has already started the production of Tesla Energy products at the plant. By 2018, Tesla expects cost of its batteries to reduce by over one-third due to large-scale production at the Gigafactory. In the same year, Tesla expects the annual lithium-ion battery production of the Gigafactory to reach around 35 gigawatt hours, which is equal to the total global production in 2014. Moreover, it has the capacity to increase production to around 150 gigawatt hours. The automaker expects the factory to provide economies of scale, reduce logistics wastes, help in optimization of co-located processes, and lower overhead costs (read more: So, What Actually is Tesla's Gigafactory).
Zacks Rank
Currently, Tesla carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked automobile stocks include Spartan Motors Inc. (NASDAQ:SPAR) , Superior Industries International, Inc. (NYSE:SUP) and Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (NYSE:CPS) . All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
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