Large-Scale Tesla Powerpack Grid To Be Installed On Nantucket Island

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been in talks with Puerto Rico officials about possibly providing the island electricity via renewable energy after its power grid was devastated by recent hurricanes. Before the U.S. territory can be given the Tesla sustainable energy treatment, however, the island of Nantucket, Mass. will be the next site of Tesla’s Powerpack grid.

According to the National Grid, this solution is meant to address the growing demand of the area’s population for energy. With over 11,000 residents, the region’s energy grid is unable to keep up with the consumption. With Tesla’s help, the grid will have an additional 48 MWh of energy, which will come from roughly 200 Powerpacks.

“National Grid, a leader in developing innovative energy solutions to meet customer and community needs, will install a 48 megawatt-hour battery energy storage system, or BESS, on the island of Nantucket, 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast, to help address some unique energy challenges,” the press release reads.

For some context to this story, the island community is currently getting its power from the mainland via two submarine cables that are connected to Cape Cod. Unfortunately, the pair cables are unable to provide Nantucket with the kind of energy levels that its growing number of people need on a regular basis.

Adding a third cable would be one solution, but it would be incredibly costly. With the 200 or so Tesla Powerpacks, however, the need for the third cable becomes substantially less pressing.

As Futurism notes, if this endeavor ends up a success, it would serve as an excellent example of Tesla’s ability to help power remote areas. Of course, Nantucket is considerably smaller compared to Puerto Rico and the terrain will undoubtedly come with additional challenges. However, just the fact that an island the size of the Massachusetts community can be powered via Powerpacks will go a long way towards allaying the people’s fears.