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Tesla wants to sell electricity in Texas

bynewsdesk
August 28, 2021

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It has filed with the Texas Public Utility Commission to generate electricity and sell it directly to the public. Details about the exact plans were not included in the filing, and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. But the company said in its filing that it plans to sell electricity directly to consumers, with a focus on those who already own Tesla cars.

Best known as the largest electric vehicle company in the world, the company also has a solar power unit. Most of that activity is focused on installing solar panels on homes or other buildings, which are then linked to batteries, which Tesla has branded as Powerwalls, which are used to store excess power captured during the day for use at night. to provide power.
But Tesla has a very nondescript company known as “Megapack” that builds very large batteries that are used to store amounts of electricity on a large scale. It built the first of these huge batteries in Hornsdale, Australia, in 2017, and has since expanded the product to other locations.

“Battery storage is transforming the global power grid and is an increasingly important part of the global transition to sustainable energy,” reads a 2019 blog post. “To meet global demand for large-scale battery storage projects like Hornsdale, Tesla has designed and developed a new battery product , especially for utility-scale projects.”

It is a growing company. Tesla has said it is investing more of its available money in its Megapack. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, utilities have reported plans to install more than 10,000 megawatts of additional large-scale battery capacity from a variety of battery suppliers between 2021 and 2023. That is more than just 1,650 megawatts of large-scale capacity at the end of last year.

Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Gambit Energy Storage LLC, a subsidiary of Tesla, is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a city about 40 miles south of Houston. A battery of that size can power about 20,000 households on a hot summer day.

But so far, Tesla has only sold Megapacks to other companies and has not attempted to sell directly to consumers. That would change, according to its filing.

Despite its long association with oil and natural gas, Texas has the third most EVs in the country, behind California and Florida, according to recent statistics from Electrek. Texas also generates a significant portion of its electrical energy through solar and wind, energy sources that must store electricity because they are not constantly available. Texas generates by far the largest amount of electricity from wind of any state and is second only to California for the amount of electricity that comes from solar energy, according to the EIA.

Solar energy may be Tesla's secret weapon
But the power grid suffered a massive outage as a result of a winter storm in February. Part of the problem was that Texas is the only state in the continental United States that is not connected to the national grid, which could allow it to tap into other states’ electricity supplies in times of crisis. Some electric utilities have since filed for bankruptcy.

CEO Elon Musk referred to the need for more electrical storage if Texas utilities are to avoid the problems of last winter.

“In Texas, there was a peak demand for power, and … because the grid isn’t able to buffer the power, they have to cut the power. There’s no power storage,” he said in an interview with investors in April. He didn’t mention Megapack in that call, but suggested that greater adoption of solar panels on homes and Tesla’s Powerwalls would help provide that buffer needed for the power grid in Texas and elsewhere.

This is the latest move by Tesla and Musk to pay more attention to Texas. Tesla is already building its second US car factory outside of Austin, and Musk has formally moved his residence to Texas, he announced in December. Last year, during a battle over Covid-19 public health restrictions that he opposed, he threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters to Texas, but he never got around to that threat.
In addition, its rocket company SpaceX also has a strong presence in South Texas, which includes a sprawling manufacturing facility, launch and landing pads, where the company builds and tests early versions of Starship, the giant rocket that Musk hopes will one day be used to launch humans. to the moon and Mars.

— Jackie Wattles of CNN Business contributed to this report

Sources

1/ https://Google.com/

2/ https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/business/tesla-electricity/index.html

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