144 Tesla Megapacks Power Australia's First 8-Hour Battery — SkimNews
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- RWE's Limondale battery in New South Wales went live as Australia's first 8-hour grid battery, capable of discharging four times longer than the two-hour batteries that dominate the Australian grid.
- The 50 MW / 400 MWh system charges at roughly 100 MW but discharges at only 50 MW — an asymmetric design that absorbs midday solar glut and stretches that energy over eight hours into the evening peak and into the night.
- The battery sits near Balranald in NSW's south-west, paired directly with RWE's existing Limondale solar farm, and is now registered on the National Electricity Market after grid operator AEMO's operational sign-off earlier this year.
- Limondale was the sole winning project in NSW's first long-duration storage tender under the state's Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, backed by a Long-Term Energy Service Agreement (LTESA) that provides a government revenue floor to make long-duration storage bankable.
- Tesla supplied the 144 Megapacks while Beon Energy Solutions handled balance of plant; two more LTESA-backed 8-hour batteries are moving through the NSW pipeline behind Limondale.
- The win adds to Tesla's growing grid-storage portfolio — the article flags recent 500 MWh (Texas) and 1 GWh (UK) Megapack projects, calling Megapack energy one of the company's fastest-growing segments.
Why it matters: Eight-hour storage is the missing piece for retiring coal in a renewables-heavy grid: two-hour batteries stabilize the network, but eight-hour systems carry solar through the entire evening ramp. NSW's LTESA tender structure is already bankrolling two more 8-hour projects behind Limondale, signaling the next storage frontier.
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