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Power United States

Tesla Files To Become an Electricity Provider in Texas (cnbc.com) 64

Tesla wants to sell electricity directly to customers in Texas, according to an application filed by the company this month with the Public Utility Commission there. From a report: The application follows the start of a big battery build out by Tesla in Angleton, Texas (near Houston), where it aims to connect a 100 megawatt energy storage system to the grid. Texas Monthly first reported on the application, submitted by a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesla called Tesla Energy Ventures. Tesla has also built several utility-scale energy storage systems around the world, including one east of Los Angeles, another underway in Monterey, California, and two in Australia -- one in Geelong, Victoria, and another in Adelaide, South Australia.
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Tesla Files To Become an Electricity Provider in Texas

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  • by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @09:56AM (#61735527) Homepage Journal

    I read the headline as "Tesla files to become an electricity supplier in Tesla."
    I shook my head and tried again.
    "Texas files to become an electricity supplier in Texas."

    I gave up after that. Is it the weekend yet?

  • Not to suprising. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @09:57AM (#61735533)

    Being that they are trying to move their operations to Texas, they probably would want to have better control over their power. Texas Power Grid is a Mess so I would think Tesla who is in the energy market (not just cars) would want to protect their interests by providing power to the state they are operating in.

    But Texas Government does have an interesting trend on outlawing things that is good for them. So lets see how well this works.

    • would want to protect their interests by providing power to the state they are operating in.

      They can get their daytime electricity at the nighttime rates and also help balance out the grid as a side benefit. This is probably more about powering their own facility when the time comes.

      • Well powering their facility, but also a way to show off their products for other customers as well.
        Tesla is not popular with politics, (on both the Left and Right) the companies growth and current size is largely from making products that people really need now, where there isn't too much competition in, and taking advantage of government intensives that weren't really targeted towards them.

      • This is probably more about powering their own facility when the time comes.
        Nope.

        They want to make a point about many states not allowing net metering for household solar.

        Point is in many states or cities, solar roof owners may not feed into the grid, or get an absurd price.

        Tesla is planning to create so called "virtual power plants". This are solar roof owners with a battery. Preferable a battery that is over sized and can be charged from the grid as well.

        Now you combine a few hundred of such owners to a "

    • It's a bonanza for anyone who's providing electricity. Eventually it will affect enough voters that they'll be forced to fix it but if Tesla can get in and get a couple of those grid collapses under their belt they'll make a handsome profit.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Surprised the other energy suppliers in Texas are allowing it. Maybe they didn't lobby hard enough.

      Peak demand is very profitable for them, and a big battery will really eat into those margins. Nightmare scenario is that more businesses get batteries that they can charge from solar or cheap overnight rates.

  • ...where it aims to connect a 100 megawatt energy storage system to the grid....

    Since when is MW a unit of energy ?
    Seems a meaningless PR story without any merit.

    Like saying my car does 340 miles. (top speed ?, range per mile ?)
    It happens to be the range before I have to refuel.

    • by Wimmie ( 446910 )

      Sorry, gallons per mile... (Where is the edit button)

    • Most intelligent people can often deal with context and figure out what they mean.

      100MW in its conext is 100 MWH (Megawatts per hour)

      if you say your car does 340 miles, that is probably the going to be the range you get on a full tank, or a full charge. Unless the context has you working with a High End Racing car, where 340 miles per hour may be its top speed. As with racing cars we don't care much about their range of a full tank (or charge)

      • Not necessarily. The amount of instantaneous wattage would be its capacity to handle peak demands. The amount of storage can grow over time but the connection capacity to the grid would remain the same.

      • Itâ(TM)s 100megawatts steady for one hour. Not 100megawatts per hour. Per hour would be MWatts/hr. The fact Tesla doesnt include the hour makes me wonder too. 100 megawatts for ten minutes? 10 seconds? Etc. They are just quoting energy not power.
      • 100MW in its conext is 100 MWH (Megawatts per hour)

        Pedantic nitpick: MWH = (Megawatts TIMES hours) not per hour.

        But it isn't clear if that is what TFA meant. This appears to be based on an array of Tesla's Megapacks [wikipedia.org], which can produce peak power for two hours.

        So TFA may be wrong, and it is really 100 MWH, or it may be correct that the power output is 100 MW for two hours = 200 MWH. Who knows?

        There are dozens of other sites reporting this, and they ALL get the units wrong. So, apparently, the mistake originated with the bozo at Tesla who wrote the press

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          I think they teach PR people to stay as far away from engineers as possible, since most press releases are utter bullshit. The executives don't want **actual** facts to be released, they want something that will run up the stock price. They don't need engineers poking holes in their pie-in-the-sky claims.

      • Most intelligent people can often deal with context and figure out what they mean.

        100MW in its conext is 100 MWH (Megawatts per hour)

        I suspect that you are not as intelligent as you think.

        Firstly, I believe that it is really 100MW (by the way, "Megawatts per hour" makes no sense in this context).

        Secondly, if you follow the links back to the Bloomberg story, which appears to be the origin, you will find this comment:
        "The battery's duration remains unclear, "

        So I think that most intelligent people would think

      • This is an example of why you should stick to what they know and not just make things up.

        Tesla batteries are optimized for applications in Tesla cars. One of the things about electric cars is that you have a few hours to 'use up' all the energy in a battery. As a result of this tesla's "grid" batteries are typically optimized for 2hr and 4hr discharge times, meaning that their "100MW" instillation would be a 200MW-hr or a 400MW-hr instillation.
        As a fun aside - this is actually a bit of an issue for the Spac

  • Retail Electric Providers are essentially bill collectors and customer service people with a webpage. A very easy company to start assuming you know the processes to register with the state. This will allow tesla to buy electricity at a wholesale rate instead of a retail rate. And I would assume with their solar offerings they would become the go to net metering REP for their customers
  • Tesla has also built several utility-scale energy storage systems around the world, including one east of Los Angeles, another underway in Monterey, California, and two in Australia -- one in Geelong, Victoria, and another in Adelaide, South Australia.

    Tesla wants to take over the world. Not just a car company. Energy storage. Solar panels. Leading the transition to clean renewable energy.
    Not to mention AI to run everything.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It is all part of the ramp up of local tech by Culture Contact group, hopefully there be no need to call in Special Circumstances

  • Story is confusing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @11:54AM (#61735909)
    In Texas there are energy generating entities and retail electric providers (REP) [energyogre.com] who purchase electricity from the producers. Centerpoint Energy [centerpointenergy.com] is the company charged with maintaining the electric grid in the Houston/Angleton areas. The article says Tesla is filing to be a REP. REP's do not generate power. They purchase power and sell it to consumers. ERCOT [ercot.com] and the PUCT [texas.gov] won't allow a company to be both. I had to read it several times before I realized they will use the energy storage and purchase electricity at night while it is cheap to use throughout the day.
  • I going to speculate that building power grid battery systems is in Tesla's interest in order to achieve powers of scale for production. Lithium-Ion is ideal for a mobile batteries and not stationary batteries. But it gives them a place to dump batteries that do not meet spec. This is the same motivation behind it's powerwall batteries but on an even larger scale. It's gives them plenty of room to experiment and tweak production methods.

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