Battery Grid Grows

It looks like California is getting in on Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) program.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announced on July 7th, that they were giving 25,000 customers the opportunity to join in on the new program; which aims to start replacing California’s energy grid with green Tesla Powerwalls in the same way VPP users have been in southern Australia and Hawaii.

Provided those customers choose to opt in, the PG&E plan would become the largest distributed battery system in the world.

“Enabling Powerwall customers to support the grid and their community is a necessary and important part of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. We seek to partner with utilities and regulators everywhere to unlock the full potential of storage to bring more renewable, resilient, and less costly electricity to everyone.” -Drew Baglino, VP Powertrain and Energy Engineering, Tesla

PG&E plans to make load management events the first priority for the new system; paying customers $2 USD for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity they add back to the grid during peak demand times - between 4pm and 9pm for the time being.

This push for greater adoption of clean energy is starting to catch on, as Tesla enthusiastically searches for more and more utility companies and governments to work with.

 Aside from this initiative in California, Tesla is reportedly also making inroads into Texas with the hope of getting the Public Utility Commission and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to consider adopting a similar program.

Let’s hope it works. The sooner we get off of coal and fossil fuel power, the better.