Tesla Energy

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), the capacity to power your home with your electric car’s battery pack, is something Tesla has been experimenting with for a long time. The Roadster, Tesla’s first vehicle, actually had the capacity to act as a home battery pack.

But the technology wasn’t implemented in Tesla’s second generation vehicles, the Model S and X. Though this week, a Tesla Energy executive hinted at an upcoming Vehicle-to-Grid capacity for Tesla and briefly mentioned Tesla’s next generation inverter.
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As we previously reported, Tesla expects Australia to become an important market for energy storage. It has the world’s highest per capita penetration of rooftop solar with 15% of households using solar for a total of 1.5 million households across the country. Those households are already using residential energy storage solutions, like the installation with 6 Tesla Powerwall units we reported on last week.

Now Tesla is also looking to push its commercial and utility-scale solution, the Powerpack, in the country. The company presented the products to Australian farmers. Energy storage for farms “could be a massive area of growth”, says Tesla.
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Tesla Energy completed its latest commercial energy storage installation this and it was at a familiar place for the company: the Brea Mall in California. The automaker has a store at the location. Simon, the retail real estate company who owns the Brea Mall, announced the new system using the Tesla Powerpack today.
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When it comes to energy storage, every percentage point counts. Bringing the price down even only by one percent can open up the technology to a new market and expand the use of renewable energies. Tesla Energy, the automaker’s energy storage division, did just that by recently reducing the price of its commercial and utility-scale product, the Powerpack, by 5 percent.
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Tesla Powerwall is slowly starting to trickle down to a few markets, but only slowly since Tesla is reportedly focusing on the next generation product, which should arrive toward the end of the year. CEO Elon Musk expects the bulk of the deliveries will be pushed to late in Q4 2016, but nonetheless, we are starting to see some bulk deliveries of the system.

One of Tesla’s main Powerwall reseller in Germany, an important market for Tesla Energy because of the popularity of solar installations, has recently received a significant order and it is now listing the home battery pack for sale on its website.
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Tesla Powerwall is slowly starting to trickle down to a few markets, but only slowly since Tesla is reportedly focusing on the next generation product, which should arrive toward the end of the year. On its website, Tesla lists the home battery pack as available in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

Now we learn that the Powerwall is also coming to Canada as Tesla chose an authorized reseller in the country.
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Elon Musk made some very interesting comments yesterday about Tesla’s stationary energy storage products: Powerwalls and Powerpacks. The company delivered 25 MWh worth of Tesla Energy products during the first quarter and now that the company released its second quarter results, analysts wanted to know how many they sold during the period, but Tesla didn’t disclose it in its shareholders letter like it did for the previous quarter.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a little late to publish his ‘Part 2’ of the ‘Tesla Secret Master Plan’, which he hoped to reveal last week, but it looks like it was pushed to today. He was a little busy overseeing the successful Falcon 9 launch and landing in Cape Canaveral last night, and the ongoing Dragon mission.

Bit of a distraction yesterday. Working on plan today.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2016

The plan is expected to outline Tesla’s future product lineup as the company transitions from a transportation company to an energy company. In line with the transition, Tesla finally moved its main domain ‘teslamotors.com’ to its recently acquired ‘tesla.com’ over the weekend.
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Tesla’s energy division has had success in winning contracts for significant energy storage projects at educational institutions in California. Last year, we reported on Tesla installing battery packs at 3 high schools in the San Diego County school districts totalling 32 MWh of capacity. The company also signed a similar deal with the Temecula Valley district and last month, we reported on Tesla installing a 4 MWh project at the College of Marin in Marin County.

Now we learn that Tesla Energy won an important 12 MWh Powerpack contract with Cal State University (CSU).
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Tesla’s brand has significantly increased in value over the past year, especially since the Model 3 unveiling and the more than 373,000 reservations it received. On the other hand, Volkswagen’s brand took a big hit following the ‘Dieselgaste’ scandal, so much so that Tesla has now surpassed the company’s VW brand in “brand value”.

BrandZ published its annual report of the 100 most valuable brands and Tesla knocked VW out of the top 10 in the car category.
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Tesla recently completed another Powerpack project, this time at the College of Marin in Marin County, California. The organization claims it is the first community college in California partnering with Tesla to install the new stationary storage products on campus.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced earlier this year that the company was already working on second generation Powerwall, Tesla’s home battery pack. He made the following comment during an exclusive event for Tesla owners in Paris:

“We are coming up with the version 2 of the Powerwall probably around July or August of this year, which will see further step changes in capabilities.”

Now it looks like the company is on or ahead of schedule with the updated device. A Tesla representative has confirmed some of the improvements featured in the new version and that installation will start “in the next few weeks.”
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Tesla co-founder and CTO, JB Straubel, was one of the keynote speakers at the Ontario Centres of Excellence’s Discovery conference yesterday. He sat down for a public conversation with journalist and current RBC Sr. Vice President John Stackhouse. You can watch a video of the conversation below:
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SolarCity will produce the electricity, Tesla Energy will store it – and the SolarCity Utilities Services will deliver it to you at night. Recently, Tesla said they would install more energy storage with Solarcity in 2016 than the USA installed in 2015. This morning SolarCity put out two press releases – one announcing the focus on Utility and Grid Services and a second regarding a 13MWAC solar power systems and at least 1.5 megawatts/6 megawatt-hour of storage with the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative (pictured above). Is all of this a warm up to build a (solar)city on Mars?

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It looks like Tesla is about to change the battery game – this time by installing more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the USA installed in 2015. In a recent filing with the SEC, it was found that Tesla foresees an almost 10X increase in sales to SolarCity for behind the meter storage.

We recognized approximately $4.9 million in revenue from SolarCity during fiscal year 2015 for sales of energy storage products governed by this master supply agreement, and anticipate recognizing approximately $44.0 million in such revenues during fiscal year 2016.

Source

According to an analysis by GTM’s Ravi Manghan this revenue projection means Tesla expects to install approximately 116 MWh of behind the meter storage. In all of 2015, the United States installed about 76 MWh of behind the meter. Starting from a very low base, SolarCity and Tesla Energy doubled their battery installation volume last year. These were small installations at test locations for special customers, but that wall of ‘start up’ is already starting to fall.
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Today Tesla updated its ‘Tesla Energy’ website to include a lot more information about its commercial and utility-scale products, and even added a ‘Design Your Powerpack System‘ page with pricing information and an option to directly order a system of up to 54 Powerpacks (5.4 MWh).

The smallest order you can place for the stationary energy storage system is for 2 Powerpacks costing $47,000 each or $470/kWh. 
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We have been covering a lot of departures from Tesla’s executive team lately.  Tesla’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Deputy General Counsel, James Chen, left the automaker earlier this month. Chen left after two other VPs did the same just a few weeks before, VP of Finance and Worldwide Controller, Michael Zanoni, and Ricardo Reyes, Tesla’s VP of Global Communications.

But now we change the pace as we learn that Ardes Johnson, a long-time former GE sales executive and more recently SolarWorld’s Vice-President of Sales in the US, joined the automaker to lead the new sales team in its ‘Tesla Energy’ division.
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SunEdison, the world’s largest renewable-energy developer, has been going through some serious financial troubles for a while now and could reportedly file for bankruptcy as soon as this week. Its stock (SUNE) lost 98% of its value over the past 12 months and people are starting to jump ship.

Through the troubles, Electrek has learned that Tesla hired a key member of SunEdison’s energy storage team.
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Tesla today began a wider rollout of its 7kWh Powerwall product for customers who are also Tesla vehicle owners across the US. Tesla Energy quietly cancelled the 10kWh Powerwall option with limited cycles we found out today because the “economics didn’t work” just months after it was announced. The 7kWh battery is obviously a lower capacity but it optimized for daily usage cycles which may not be optimal for those looking for a backup solution rather than an off grid application…
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Last month we reported that Tesla was in talks to build a Gigafactory in South Africa according to the Western Cape Executive Council for business opportunities. The news came a month after Tesla hired former GreenCape CEO Evan Rice to lead Tesla Energy’s effort in the country.

Now we learn that Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille confirmed that Tesla is opening a new office in the city and that the company should announce its plans for South Africa “soon”.
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Last week we reported that SolarCity more than doubled its battery pack business with Tesla Energy in 2015 versus the previous year, and the trend is set to continue as the solar installer confirmed today that it selected Tesla’s energy division to supply its massive energy storage project on Kaua’i Island in Hawaii.

We reported on the project last year when SolarCity announced its power purchase agreement (PPA) with Kaua’i electric utility (KIUC) for two 12 MW solar arrays and their intention to install 52 MWh of energy storage.
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