After announcing plans yesterday to move its manufacturing partners onto green energy, it’s come to light that Apple is using batteries from Tesla for energy storage.
Apple’s 130-megawatt solar farm is set to store 240-megawatt-hours of energy and consists of 85 Telsa lithium-ion ‘megapacks’ to hold all the power, according to The Verge. In a press release, Apple says that this much energy can power 7,000 homes in a day.
This solar farm, called ‘California Flats, will help Apple move all of its manufacturing to green energy, making the company’s operations much greener than they were before. Apple’s goal is to get carbon neutral by 2030, and this solar farm plus its energy storage component are two ways the company is trying to get there.
The main reason that Apple has so many batteries is that solar and wind power both only collect energy if the weather is sunny or windy. Ideally, with the batteries, the solar farm can store a few extra days’ worth of energy to hopefully outlast any inclement weather that might stop the farm from generating electricity.
While Telsa is well known for its eccentric CEO and electric cars, the company has also been quietly building a name for itself in the electric storage and solar industries. According to Bloomberg, it even has a 100-megawatt battery attached to the Texas power grid that could power 20,000 homes.
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