The government of Taiwan is reportedly planning to approach Tesla about setting up lithium ion battery facilities on the heels of Tuesday’s blackout, the island nation’s biggest power outage since 1999. The facilities would be aimed at storing renewable energy on the island.
Tesla is using its lithium ion battery technology to help Australia and California to implement smart grid and grid storage, and we can learn from them in the future,” Taiwan’s Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee told reporters.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen’s has pledged to make Taiwan nuclear energy free by 2025, and the talks of battery facilities with Tesla would be a crucial step in her plans of utilizing more green energy.
Chen told reporters that the Taiwanese government would look to potentially form a joint venture with Tesla for the battery project as the government doesn’t have prepared a budget for the project.
Tuesday’s blackout reportedly came after “government-run petroleum company CPC Corporation ran into difficulties while replacing the power supply for a control system responsible for sending natural gas to a power plant.”
The plan is for Taiwan send a team of officials to the U.S. to talk with Tesla in the near future, although Chen would not be leading the talks.
“We will try to check out whether there is a suitable solution…we will get in touch with them,” Chen said.
Taiwan is just the latest area that is looking to strike a deal with Elon Musk and Tesla.
Tesla secured a contract back in July to install the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage system in South Australia.
The Australia deal is for a 100-megawatt (129 mWh) Powerpack system to be paired with Neoen’s Hornsdale wind farm.
The deal first came to a head in March when Musk committed to solving South Australia’s power crisis in 100 days through a Tesla Energy product or the system would be free.
Tesla has not commented on the potential Taiwan talks just yet, but if they go well, another area will be joining Tesla’s energy revolution.
