Hyundai is building a battery 50% larger than Tesla’s megabattery in South Australia
Tesla’s South Australia battery system likely won’t hold the title of world’s largest for long. Hyundai Electric and Energy Systems is building a 150-megawatt lithium-ion battery storage system – 50 percent larger than Tesla’s – in South Korea. And they say it should go live in around three months.
Hyundai’s South Korea battery could go live in February. They contracted with metal smelting company Korea Zinc for the system costing 50 billion won, or around $45 million. Korea Zinc will use the battery storage system at their Ulsan refinery.
Related: Tesla’s South Australia battery starts delivering power a day early
Bloomberg New Energy Finance senior associate Ali Asghar said, “Musk has set a benchmark on how quickly you can install and commission a battery of this size,” and that plummeting costs are “making them a compelling mainstream option for energy storage applications in many areas around the world.”
Hyundai Electric was created earlier in 2017 in a spinoff-move by shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries, according to Green Car Reports. The company has since expanded into the power storage market – they said in a statement the global market is anticipated to grow from $2.6 billion last year to $29.2 billion by 2025.
“The energy market is rapidly changing globally due to the expansion of new and renewable energy sources and the trend of declining power sources,” said Hyundai Electric president Jung Young-jul. “We are targeting the market through technology-competitive systems and data analysis based on various experiences.”
Bloomberg said battery prices have plunged by nearly half since 2014, and that each time the global supply of batteries doubles, prices fall by 19 percent.
