Angleton, Texas, To Have One Of The Biggest Tesla Energy Storage Projects In The World

In Angleton, Texas, an energy storage project was proposed to provide sustainable backup support to the grid. This resulted in the installation of 81 Tesla Megapacks, providing 200 Mwh greater outage protection while reducing the community’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Angleton, where the Tesla Megapacks are installed, is a city in and the county seat of Brazoria County, Texas, United States, within the Houston - The Woodlands - Sugar Land metropolitan area. Angleton lies at the intersection of State Highway 288, State Highway 35, and the Union Pacific Railroad. Greater Houston is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States, encompassing nine counties along the Gulf Coast in Southeast Texas. With a population of 6,997,384 people at the 2018 census estimates and 7,122,240 in 2020, Greater Houston is the second-most populous in Texas after the Dallas - Fort Worth metroplex.

The approximately 10,000-square-mile (26,000 km2) region centers on Harris County, the third-most populous county in the U.S., which contains the city of Houston - the largest economic and cultural center of the South - with a population of more than 2.3 million. Greater Houston is part of the Texas Triangle megaregion along with the Dallas - Fort Worth metroplex, Greater Austin, and Greater San Antonio. Greater Houston also serves as a major anchor and economic hub for the Gulf Coast. Its Port of Houston is the second largest port in the United States, sixteenth largest in the world, and leads the U.S. in international trade.

A Tesla Megapack basically transforms the way the grid is powered - delivering giga-scale capacity. Tesla took everything they know about battery technology to enable the world's largest energy projects. For instance, a 1 Gigawatt hour (GWh) project can provide record energy capacity - enough to power every home in San Francisco for 6 hours. It is an all-in-one system: every Megapack arrives pre-assembled and pre-tested in one enclosure from the Tesla Gigafactory - including battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls. No assembly is required, and all you need to do is connect Megapack’s AC output to your site wiring. Installation is very fast: at the site level, Megapack requires 40% less space and 10x fewer parts than current systems on the market. As a result, this high-density, modular system can be installed 10x faster than current systems.

The Tesla Megapack project in Angleton has a capacity of 100 MW/200 MWh – making it one of the biggest Tesla energy storage projects in the world, as per Fred Lambert, from electrek. "… hopefully, it will help soften the blow if an event similar to last February’s happens again, but the Texas grid is going to need to add a lot more backup power.". Electrek also stated that "… Tesla has been approved to be an energy distributor in the state of Texas. The move is part of CEO Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla Energy to become a distributed global utility, an endeavor that could even outgrow the company’s automotive business."

The article on electrek also mentions that the State of Texas, where Tesla has officially moved headquarters and where the Cybertruck and Model Y production will be made, could also become a big market to help the company achieve this goal of becoming a distributed global utility. The company has several major energy projects underway in the state, including a deal to deploy solar roofs and Powerwalls on a “large scale” in a new community being built in Austin.

All images courtesy of Tesla Inc.

Nico Caballero is the VP of Finance of Cogency Power, specializing in solar energy. He also holds a Diploma in Electric Cars from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and enjoys doing research about Tesla and EV batteries. He can be reached at @NicoTorqueNews on Twitter. Nico covers Tesla and electric vehicle latest happenings at Torque News.