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Drone footage of Tesla facility sparks excitement online: ‘I’m thinking 2024 will be an incredible year’
Story by Laurelle Stelle •
Posted 11h ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/drone-footage-of-tesla-facility-sparks-excitement-online-i-m-thinking-2024-will-be-an-incredible-year/ar-BB1hdVnJ

Arecent drone flyover of Tesla’s Lathrop Megafactory shows the company’s progress on its incredible grid-scale battery Megapacks, Teslarati reported.

The footage, which emerged in December, showed an aerial view of the California facility where Tesla produces its Megapacks. In addition to revealing two Tesla Semis and some smaller battery units in the lot, the video also revealed 339 Megapacks in the company’s holding lot.

Tesla Megapacks are huge battery packs designed to be hooked up to the electrical grid. According to the company, they each hold enough electricity to power 3,600 homes for one hour.

Teslarati lays out the numbers: There is a two-hour unit that provides 1.9 megawatts of power and 3.9 megawatt-hour of energy and a four-hour unit that offers 1 MW of power and 3.9 MWh of energy. Units range from $1,270,310 (four-hour version without installation) to $2,123,590 (the more powerful two-hour version, with installation included).

That means the 339 Megapacks shown in the drone footage could provide over 1.3 gigawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power a city of more than a million households for an hour.

And it will only ramp up from here. As Teslarati explained, the Lathrop Megafactory has a capacity of 10,000 units per year, with another 10,000-unit factory soon to open in Shanghai.

During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said, per Teslarati, that “the Energy division is becoming [Tesla’s] highest-margin business” and added that Tesla “energy and service now contribute over half a billion to quarterly profit.”

Those batteries are being incorporated into grid upgrades around the globe. The Oberon Solar + Storage project in California relies on Megapacks to hold the clean energy it’s generating, and Victoria, Australia, plans to use Megapacks for one of the world’s largest battery projects.

That’s important because affordable and clean methods for generating energy, including solar and wind, don’t create electricity on demand. They generate power when conditions are right, like when the sun is up or the wind is blowing. To switch from expensive and polluting fuel sources such as coal to ones that cost consumers less and keep the planet clean, we need lots of battery storage — and Tesla has positioned itself perfectly to provide it.

“I heard somewhere that Tesla energy growth has been pretty good,” one commenter said. “I’m thinking 2024 will be an incredible year.”