At the end of May, Tesla held a Powerwall home energy storage battery pilot project in the United States. 64 northern Texas homes participated in the trial and installed Tesla-provided rooftop solar panels and home energy storage batteries. Test results showed that the device was able to activate idle battery capacity within seconds and provide transmission services to the grid, reducing stress on the Texas grid.
Virtual power plants include power generation systems, energy storage equipment and communication systems, which help to balance the supply and demand of electricity, and have economic value while meeting electricity demand.
Tesla is now calling on major Texas grid operators to change the rules on how residential batteries can participate in the electricity market and earn revenue. If the plan is approved by the Electric Reliability Commission of Texas (ERCOT), a residential power generation plan will be launched within a year, Arushi Sharma Frank, Tesla's director of U.S. energy market policy, said during a virtual seminar at Ercot.
In fact, this isn't the first time Tesla has experimented with homes as virtual power plants.
As early as 2018, Tesla has announced a partnership with the South Australian government and various energy departments to provide users with solar panels and Tesla batteries, aiming to turn a detached house into a large interconnected power plant. . The two sides plan to build the world's largest virtual power plant, which will have 250 megawatts of solar energy and 650 megawatts of battery storage time when completed. In a critical period, it can rival the production capacity of large gas turbines or coal-fired power plants.
In the process of cooperating with the Australian government, Tesla has developed a relatively mature cooperation model. Specifically, Tesla installed solar panels and battery storage for local residents for free. The home is connected to the grid, and Tesla will then adjust the power reserve based on changes in local electricity prices. Buying electricity reserves when electricity prices are low and selling electricity for the difference when electricity prices are high generates revenue by selling energy to the national electricity market and providing backup energy for grid operators.
In addition to using energy storage batteries as a virtual power plant, Tesla has also developed bidirectional charging technology that uses electric vehicles as mobile energy storage devices to regulate regional voltages.
Two-way charging technology refers to the fact that electric vehicles are connected to the grid and the Internet at the same time, and the remote control vehicle charges when the electricity price is low and supplies power when the electricity price peaks. A certain scale of electric vehicles is a prerequisite for their value to the grid. In May 2022, Tesla announced that the bidirectional charging technology of its electric vehicles is ready, and it is ready to add this function to its models to ensure the stability of energy supply.
In the long run, various forms of virtual power plants may be the general trend.
