Hawaii's last coal-fired power plant will be transformed into an energy facility with 158 Tesla batteries

On September 1, 2022, the American state of Hawaii closed the AES thermal power plant, the last coal-fired power plant in the state. It is reported that a huge battery facility ``Kapolei Energy Storage (KES)'' will be built on the site of this AES thermal power plant and will start operation in January 2024.

Kapolei Energy Storage
https://www.kapoleienergystorage.com/

A huge battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant | Canary Media
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/a-huge-battery-has-replaced-hawaiis-last-coal-plant

The state of Hawaii, which is made up of multiple islands, is far from the American continent, so its power system is completely independent. In addition, the islands were not connected by power cables, so thermal power generation was the mainstream energy supply because it was cheap and easy to manage. The AES Thermal Power Plant is a coal-fired power plant located in Kapolei City, Oahu, and has been supplying electricity to the entire island of Oahu for 30 years.

However, in 2015, the Hawaii State Legislature passed a bill to ``reach 100% renewable energy generation by 2045.'' As a result, a project was announced in 2020 to shut down the AES thermal power plant and construct a battery facility.

Plus Power, the energy company in charge of the project, had planned to complete KES by summer 2021, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, battery procurement was delayed, and the AES coal-fired power plant will not be operational until 2022. It has been postponed until September.

KES, operated by Hawaii Electric Power Industry, is a facility with 158 Tesla MegaPacks installed on a 7-acre site (approximately 28,000 square meters). The battery has a response time of 250 milliseconds, an overall KES storage capacity of 565 megawatt hours, and an instantaneous discharge capacity of 185 megawatts.

Electricity is generated by solar power generation on the island, and any excess power after charging the battery is sent directly to the power grid. Although the electricity that KES can provide is not as good as when it was a coal-fired power plant, it is still able to cover about 17% of Oahu's peak electricity.

In addition, Oahu is often damaged by earthquakes and storms, but even if the battery loses power due to some disaster, KES batteries have the ability to restart the power grid. This will prevent Oahu from suffering an island-wide power outage.

'We are thrilled to join Hawaii and the Hawaii Power Industry's efforts to achieve 100% renewable energy and to play a role in moving us one step closer to achieving 100% renewable energy,' said Brandon Keefe, Executive Chairman of Plus Power. It's an incredible feeling. We are enabling more clean renewable energy to be added to the system to replace energy from coal-fired power plants.'