The most advanced grid-scale battery energy storage system in the world, the Kapolei Energy Storage (KES) facility located on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, has come online.
Plus Power’s KES battery project, located on 8 acres of industrial land on the southwest side of Oahu near Honolulu, uses 158 Tesla Megapack 2 XL lithium iron phosphate batteries, each roughly the size of a shipping container. It offers the grid 185 megawatts of total power capacity and 565 megawatt-hours of electricity, acting in an electrical “shock absorber” role often filled by combustion-powered peaker plants, according to Plus Power.
The KES plant interconnects near three of Hawaiian Electric's critical power generation facilities, enabling KES to support the reboot of those power plants in the event of an island-wide emergency, otherwise known as “black start” capability. The KES batteries will help replace the grid capacity formerly provided by an AES coal power plant less than a m