Tesla Energy Ventures

What’s happening? Earlier this month, Tesla Energy Ventures was authorized to sell electricity to retail customers in Texas on the ERCOT grid.

Why is this important? This isn’t new. Tesla has a virtual power plant up and running in South Australia and this summer began a beta version in California too.

How will this be important? “Usually an electricity service provider that doesn’t have generation on the ground essentially acts as a middleman, they buy on the wholesale market and turn around and sell to customers,” Ted Kury, director of energy studies for the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida, told UtilityDive at the time of the Tesla filing. “Tesla would have the ability to act as a buyer and seller simultaneously and have access to a lot of data. Regulators are going to have to think about what the implications might be.”

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