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Blog Tesla Plans to Sell Energy to Texans

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Tesla has filed an application with the Texas Public Utility Commission to sell electricity to customers.

The application, first reported by Texas Monthly, was submitted by a Tesla subsidiary called Tesla Energy Ventures.

Tesla also intends to build two massive batteries near Austin and Houston. The 100-megawatt storage system would enable Tesla to serve power companies. The company has built several examples of large-scale batteries around the world, including California and Australia.

In those instances, Tesla is assisting the power companies. Its new venture in Texas would sell power directly to consumers. The reliability of the grid in Texas has been of concern since freezing temperatures in February left millions of residents without power or water for days.

Tesla is currently building a factory near Austin. Chief Executive Elon Musk’s other company SpaceX also has operations in the state. 

It’s not clear when Tesla plans to bring the service live.

 
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What I want to know is when can I get a Tesla solar roof where I live?
Fully-opened kimono ... I live in a small city is a small (population)
county in the PNW and on the Coast ... so I'm not going to see any
where near as many sunny days as those of you living in Texas.
- Jim
 
What I want to know is when can I get a Tesla solar roof where I live?
Fully-opened kimono ... I live in a small city is a small (population)
county in the PNW and on the Coast ... so I'm not going to see any
where near as many sunny days as those of you living in Texas.
- Jim
Tesla seems to be focusing their solar roof sales in certain areas

Also, I will caution that the solar yield from a solarroof is lower than panels. So if you are needing every photon regular panels may be a better match.

With that said, the Solarroof is damn sexy (for a roof) and we are happy with ours! But the best feature of our system is the Powerwalls. Outages and high summer power bills are things of the past.
 
All EV batteries require thermal management. They will catch fire if overheated, and charging/discharging while frozen will destroy the cells.

"Every Megapack arrives pre-assembled and pre-tested in one enclosure from our Gigafactory—including battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls."
 
Are they going to maintain transmission lines, power poles and customer meters
Looks like you aren't in TX... Texas has a deregulated electricity market that has 2 types of providers:

Retail Electricity Provider (REP): They retail electricity to consumers. Some generate, while others buy on the wholesale market and sell to consumers. They charge customers a fee for the generation of electricity on a per kWh basis. This fee varies by provider -- and there are hundreds of providers today.

Transmission & Delivery Utility (TDU): This is the monopoly utility that owns the transmission system and meters and actually delivers the electricity across the grid (so they are the ones that maintain the grid). They charge fees for delivery (the TDU for my area has a base monthly fee plus a per-kWh charge) -- this fee is the same for all customers in a geographic area for the TDU.

The REP handles all billing to the customer and is basically the middle man between power gen and the consumer, and they bundle the TDU fees also. Tesla has applied for this...
 
Why would Tesla want to handle just the billing aspect of energy delivery
I wonder if this is a requirement to support VPPs. That would make more sense to me than Tesla wanting to branch out into selling energy from other sources.
Likely related to VPPs... There are no VPPs offerings in Texas today, and I could see them doing something that helps pull from distributed storage (ie Powerwall customers) similar to the VPPs in other states. That would be an arbitrage opportunity -- pay the customers for pulling at a fixed rate then trigger when the wholesale electricity price spikes.
 
Hmmm, I didn't think that using a Powerwall -also- allowed putting power back into the grid
(aka your local electricity provider). So this seems to imply that - IF I should have "extra"
electrons from my solar roof/panels (i.e. my Powerwall is fully charged) that I could then
also "sell" power to the provider. That would, of course, require that first I have a Tesla
system (don't yet - not available here in Washington state at this time) and second that I
can generate enough extra power to fill my Powerwall (over and above what power I'm
using) ... which is, again, not so likely because I live in Washington state. ???
Yes, I did contact Tesla (thru the chat on Tesla.com) and was told "Sorry, Charlie, we
aren't selling Powerwalls, Tesla roofs, or Tesla panels in Washington." They then told me
they'd contact me when that changes - but also said words to the effect of "I am not
allowed to speculate on when that might happen.". Which, to me, means that there
are no firm plans to sell solar in Washington state ... at this time. Perhaps in Eastern
Washington but not on the West side of the Cascades? Wait, Wait - the Eastern part
of the state has zero large population centers and a small percentage of the population.

===> "Don't hold your breath, Jim - you aren't likely to see Tesla solar ... in your
lifetime." (I am, after all, in the later stages of my life.)
- *Sigh* ... Jim