Tesla Energy
As many people know, Tesla, using their MegaPack battery storage product, built the Hornsdale Battery Storage Plant in South Australia, which solved their brownout issues, and has already saved South Australia lots of money (so much so that they are expanding the plant).
The front half of
a Tesla MegaPack (the same one sits up against the back of it)
Now, Ventura County, California was going to build a new gas-fired power plant so that Southern Edison could supply peak energy to the grid upon demand. But upon further investigation, they changed their mind and are building instead a gigantic battery storage plant, like the one in South Australia, only larger.
The Tesla-built Hornsdale plant is 129 megawatt hours.
Each one of those
99 shipping-container-sized units is a Tesla "MegaPack"
The Southern Edison plant in Ventura County will be 400 megawatt hours! Over three times larger than the Hornsdale plant.
Strata SVP of Energy Storage, Joshua Rogal, said, referring to Tesla...
So thanks to Tesla, a lot less gas-fired peaker plants will be built... optimally none once the word continues to get around about how profitable these energy storage plants are, and the benefit of them being able to come online in milliseconds instead of in minutes... a grid power manager's dream!
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Tesla’s
little-known Autobidder software
product has already made over
$330 million for energy investors
Autobidder is a real-time trading and control platform for Tesla energy assets, like Tesla’s Powerpacks, Powerwalls, and MegaPacks, optimized through machine learning to better use and more directly monetize those assets. What it does is control when power from battery storage is sold back to the power utility... sell when the price of the electricity is high, and charge the batteries when the price is low, like during off-peak hours at night.
Tesla describes the platform:
"Autobidder provides independent power producers [even homeowners], utilities, and capital partners the ability to autonomously monetize battery storage assets. Autobidder is a real-time trading and control software platform that provides value-based asset management and portfolio optimization, enabling owners and operators to configure operational strategies that maximize revenue according to their business objectives and risk preferences."
Autobidder can even
be used by homeowners with Tesla Powerwalls.
Although no solar panes needed, having some is the icing on the cake.
Rohan Ma, Tesla’s lead on Autobidder and other energy optimization products, has confirming that Autobidder’s portfolio has grown to 7 GWh, "...and our real-time algorithms have already returned over $330 million in trading profits to energy storage investors."
That’s an impressive amount of energy capacity and profits in a relatively short amount of time for a relatively brand-new product.
Tesla’s Autobidder, combined with its energy storage products, has made electric utilities nervous as Tesla is “changing the game” – a game that electric utilities have had complete control over for a long time.
But more recently, to not be left behind, electric utilities have themselves been investing more into energy storage products at scale, including using Tesla’s MegaPack. Tesla has a roughly two-year backlog of MegaPack orders despite ramping up production of the utility-scale battery system.
See, contrary to the belief of certain clueless hedge-fund managers and financial analysts, Tesla is not "just a car company".