Ta'u Island microgrid (2016)
Tesla and SolarCity completed a 1.4 MW solar array with 6 MWh of battery storage on Ta'u, a small island in American Samoa. The system replaced diesel generators that were refueled by barge, cutting the island's fuel use by roughly 100,000 gallons a year.
The island's roughly 600 residents got near-continuous renewable power, with diesel kept only as backup.
It became the most-cited proof that solar-plus-storage could replace diesel on isolated islands, but at village scale.
The Red Sea project is about 250 times larger in solar capacity and 200 times larger in storage, showing how far off-grid renewable systems have scaled in a decade.
