Switch turns to Tesla batteries for solar-power storage

Data center provider Switch has selected Tesla as the battery supplier for a massive solar project at its northern Nevada data-center facilities.

It’s a geographically easy alliance as Switch’s campus is right near Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada manufacturing facility. While best known for its cars, Tesla has also made quite an entry in the battery space with products such as the Powerwall, Powerpack, and Megapack energy storage products.

Switch recently broke ground on Gigawatt 1, a huge project that will use solar panels from First Solar to generate a total of 555 megawatts (MWs) of power at three locations and Tesla Megapacks to store the energy.

Data centers are frequently built close to renewable sources of energy, usually hydropower. That’s why many Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft data centers are sitting by rivers. Solar is the easiest form of power to collect, but it’s also the most fickle. Solar-powered sites are at the mercy of sufficient power storage to supply electricity during darkness and cloudy days..

Adam Kramer, executive vice president of strategy at Switch, says peak solar production is around 1 p.m. when the sun is overhead, but overall peak consumer demand is around 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., when the sun is either setting or has set, depending on the time of year.

In running a data center, there are no peak hours. “The Internet is 24/7. If they aren’t using it in New York, they are using it in L.A. We have a very flat power profile. Our load looks the same at 2 a.m. as it does at 2 p.m.,” Kramer told me.