LOS ANGELES (AP) – Tesla announced Thursday that it will build a battery storage system at a California utility substation that will have the largest output of any existing lithium-ion storage facility.
Southern California Edison selected Tesla to construct the storage project in Riverside County, the company said in a statement.
The facility will store 80 megawatt hours of electricity, or enough to power more than 2,500 households for a day, Tesla said.
The system is designed to increase electrical grid reliability by taking a charge from it during off-peak hours and delivering power to customers during peak hours, the Los Angeles Times reported. It is expected to go online by the end of this year.
Edison and other California utilities are under a 2013 order by California’s Public Utilities Commission to install 1.3 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2020. One gigawatt is the equivalent of 1,000 megawatts.