Tesla starts Megapack 3, and every number in the story is Tesla's

About 5 MWh a unit against 3.9 MWh for the Megapack 2 XL, from a Texas line rated at 50 GWh a year that went from groundbreaking to production in 16 months. No price.

Tesla has begun building the Megapack 3 at its new Megafactory in Brookshire, Texas. The company puts the unit at about 5 MWh against 3.9 MWh for the Megapack 2 XL, a 28% increase, achieved with a larger 2.8-litre cell format and a claimed 78% reduction in thermal-system connection points. Tesla says the line is dedicated to Megapack 3 at 50 GWh a year, and that the plant went from groundbreaking to operation in 16 months.

Energy per enclosure is a more consequential specification than it sounds. Grid storage projects are constrained by land, interconnection and installation labour at least as much as by cell cost, so putting 28% more energy inside the same footprint reduces the number of pads, cables, cranes and permits per megawatt-hour delivered. Fewer thermal connection points is the same argument applied to failure rates and commissioning time. This is where storage cost declines now come from — the cells are already cheap.

And every one of those numbers came from Tesla. Electrek reports them and offers no independent measurement, and no price is published for the unit or per kilowatt-hour. Under our evidence rule a self-stated capability claim is capped at a 2 no matter how large the magnitude, and the 28% figure is precisely what makes this newsworthy, so that is where it sits. Production starting is observable. The specification is a claim until somebody else measures one.

Source: Electrek