Tesla’s foray into clean energy reached a high point last year when it completed an enormous solar power facility in the island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Fitted with as many as 5,328 photovoltaic panels as well as 60 industrial-scale PowerPack batteries, the 1.4-megawatt installation currently provides nearly 100-percent of the island’s energy. The company’s latest project is a lot more ambitious than the previous one, seeing as it actually aims to power the entire island of Kauai with the help of a 13-megawatt solar farm.

Spread over an area of 562.3-square-miles (approx.  1,456.4 square-kilometers), Kauai is one of the main islands that make Hawaii, and is home to over 68,000 people. In a move to reduce Hawaii’s dependence on environmentally-harmful fossil fuels, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) has joined hands with Elon Musk’s company to build a state-of-the-art solar farm, featuring up to 54,978 PV panels and 272 industrial-scale Powerpacks.

As part of the newly-signed contract, KIUC will be purchasing solar electricity from Tesla at 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour. Once operational, it will be the biggest solar storage facility in the entire world, offering up to 52 megawatt-hours of power storage. As pointed out by David Bissel, the current CEO and president of KIUC, the plant will also be capable of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels by a staggering 1.6 million gallons every year.

The initiative is a major step forward in the Hawaiian government’s plans to achieve 100-percent green energy-powered transportation by the year 2045.

To learn more about the project, head over to the official website of Tesla.

Via: The Verge