Last year we unveiled Asia Pacific's first grid scale Tesla Powerpack battery storage system to be integrated into a public electricity network. The move represented a radical change in how we manage Auckland's electricity network and was a global showcase of the new solutions utilities increasingly have access to. 

This innovation enables energy to be stored during low demand and discharged during high demand to even out demand curves (known as peak shaving). In the first 6 months, the Glen Innes Substation shaved peak demand for well over 90 days, during which the battery discharged energy equivalent to 37 times its rated capacity.
 
Network resilience is also boosted because power stored in batteries can be made available in the case of an outage so that impacts to customers are either avoided entirely or mitigated.

Since deployment, we have collected large amounts of data to fine-tune the system to perform in different modes, depending on what is best suited to demand patterns at the time. The data gathered in this real world deployment is also used in future scenario modelling.

By gauging trends such as household energy consumption, the effect of infill housing, and the uptake of new energy systems, we can target growth areas and defer or avoid the significant investment required in a new substation until needed.

And when connection or consumption growth requires a conventional network upgrade, we can mobilise the batteries to other parts of the network where power demand is rising.

Its ongoing success is supported by Vector's expertise in the design, installation, integaration, and management of this large scale network solution.