144 Tesla Megapacks power Australia's first 8-hour battery — SkimNews
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- RWE's Limondale battery switched on as Australia's longest-duration grid battery at 50 MW / 400 MWh, discharging for a full eight hours near Balranald in south-west NSW beside the existing Limondale solar farm, and is now registered on the National Electricity Market after AEMO sign-off
- The battery is deliberately asymmetric — it charges at roughly 100 MW but discharges at only 50 MW, filling in about four hours during the midday solar glut and stretching that energy across the evening peak and into the night to address the "duck curve" problem
- Limondale was the sole winning bid in NSW's first long-duration storage tender under the state's Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, backed by a Long-Term Energy Service Agreement that acts as a government revenue floor making the longer-duration project bankable
- Tesla supplied the 144 Megapacks while Beon Energy Solutions handled the balance of plant, with the project described in the source as "another flagship win" for the Megapack energy business
- Two more LTESA-backed 8-hour batteries are moving through the NSW pipeline behind Limondale, signaling the tender model is producing a pipeline, not a one-off
- Tesla's Megapack grid business continues to accumulate global reference projects, including a 500 MWh system that just went live in Texas and a 1 GWh project in the UK
Why it matters: Limondale is the proof-of-concept that 8-hour storage can be financed, built, and dispatched in Australia — the duration required to carry solar through the entire evening ramp and displace coal rather than just stabilize frequency. With two more LTESA-backed 8-hour batteries already in the NSW pipeline, the policy template is replicable, and Tesla adds another flagship Megapack reference deal alongside its 500 MWh Texas and 1 GWh UK projects.
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