

Last year during a fight over Covid-19 public health restrictions that Musk opposed, he threatened he would move Tesla’s headquarters to Texas, but he never followed through on that threat. Tesla is already building its second US car factory outside of Austin, and Musk formally moved his residence to Texas, he disclosed in December. This is the latest move by Tesla and Musk to focus more attention on Texas. He did not mention Megapack on that call, but suggested that the greater adoption of solar panels on homes and Tesla’s Powerwalls would help to provide that buffer needed for the grid in Texas and elsewhere. There’s no power storage,” he said in a call with investors in April. “In Texas, there was a peak power demand, and … because the grid lacks the ability to buffer the power, they have to shut down power. Some electric companies have filed for bankruptcy since then.ĬEO Elon Musk made reference to the need for more electrical storage if utilities in Texas are to avoid the problems of this past winter. Part of the problem was that Texas is the only state in the continental United States not tied into the national grid, which would allow it to tap into other states’ electricity supplies at times of crisis. Texas generates by far the greatest amount of electricity from wind power of any state and is second only to California for the amount of electricity coming from to solar power, according to the EIA.īut its electrical grid suffered a massive failure due to a winter storm in February.

Texas also generates a significant portion of electrical power through solar and wind power, sources of power that need to have storage of electricity since they are not constantly available. That would change, according to its filing.ĭespite its long association with oil and natural gas, Texas has the third most EVs in the country, behind only California and Florida, according to recent statistics from Electrek.

A battery that size could power about 20,000 homes on a hot summer day.īut, so far, Tesla has sold Megapacks only to other companies and Tesla has not tried to sell directly to consumers. That’s up from only 1,650 megawatts of large-scale capacity in place at the end of last year.īloomberg reported earlier this year that Gambit Energy Storage LLC, a Tesla subsidiary, is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town roughly 40 miles south of Houston.
#Yep energy ca install#
Utilities have reported plans to install over 10,000 megawatts of additional large-scale battery power capacity from 2021 through 2023 from all manner of battery suppliers, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Tesla has said it is investing more of its available cash in its Megapack.

“To match global demand for massive battery storage projects like Hornsdale, Tesla designed and engineered a new battery product specifically for utility-scale projects.” “Battery storage is transforming the global electric grid and is an increasingly important element of the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” it said in a 2019 blog post.
