Megapacks drive Tesla battery boom, but supply constraints still bite

Tesla has announced a near doubling in battery storage installations in 2020 – driven largely by the deployment of its new Megapack storage product – but says supply constraints continue to bite.

Tesla deployed more than three gigawatt hours of battery storage around the globe in 2020 – a rise of 83 per cent from the previous year.

“This growth was driven mainly by the popularity of Megapack, our utility scale energy storage product,” the company said. “Powerwall demand continues to increase as the residential business continues to grow.”

Tesla has dominated most of the large scale battery storage installations in Australia, since being chosen for the Hornsdale big battery in South Australia in late 2017, then the world’s biggest lithium ion battery.

It has recently been chosen to work with Hornsdale owner Neoen in the planned Victoria big battery near Geelong, and at least half of the other major installations, although it appears to have lost out to competitors in AGL’s big battery plans for more than 1,000MW of capacity.

Th first of the 3MWh Megapack products have been installed in Australia, superseding the smaller Powerpack in utility scale installations, while the small Powerwall unit has maintained a significant market share in the domestic market, including through its planned 50,000 virtual power plant in South Australia.

Still, the company’s supply problems continue to bite and the company says it is looking to increase both its own production capacity and its supply chain to ensure that it can continue its growth – both in energy storage and electric vehicles, and particularly for the rollout of its electric truck, the Tesla Semi.

“There is a constraint on battery cell output,” Musk noted in the earnings call. “We’ve been very clear with ours suppliers CTL or Panasonic or LG, that (we) will take as many batteries as they can produce.