Tesla Energy is striving to become a large distributed electric utility- one so significant that it may soon outgrow the Tesla automotive business, according to Elon Musk.
He said:
Tesla Energy is going to be a major part of Tesla’s activity in the future. And Tesla’s mission from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy – that means sustainable energy generation and sustainable energy consumption in the form of electric vehicles.
The plan is to deploy large and small solar and energy storage systems continually. Everything from residential level to utility-scale would be managed under a single platform and thus act as a giant electric utility.
A few years ago, the company released a new product to push it towards this goal called Autobidder. It is software designed to control energy assets.
The company describes the platform on its website:
Autobidder provides independent power producers, utilities, and capital partners the ability to monetize battery assets autonomously. Autobidder is a real-time trading and control platform that offers 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.
Companies can use the platform to better and more directly monetize energy storage assets, like Tesla’s Powerwalls, Powerpacks, and new Megapacks.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR), aka the “Tesla Big Battery,” in Australia, is managed with Autobidder. So is the Powerwall deployment with Green Mountain Power in Vermont. And now, Tesla’s Autobidder is entering the European energy market. However, the platform is compatible with any type of energy storage, not only Tesla products.
Tesla says:
Autobidder has hundreds of megawatt-hours of assets under management that have supplied gigawatt-hours of grid services globally. Autobidder operates at every scale: from aggregations of behind-the-meter residential systems to 100MW utility-scale installations. With seamless integration between hardware and software, Autobidder can be trusted to capture revenues immediately after project energization and 24/7 in dynamic environments.
Tesla recently joined the European Power Exchange (EPEX SPOT), which is an electric power exchange operating in several major European markets. It will link its Autobidder platform to the system.
Tesla Energy executive Rohan Ma said on EPEX SPOT’s announcement:
We are excited to launch our Autobidder platform in Europe this summer for Tesla customers seeking to monetize their energy storage assets in electricity markets.
This link-up means big business for Tesla is on the horizon. The energy side of the company will likely catch up to the auto business as they say. Good thing, too, because it’s essential to have a source of clean energy to charge up the electric vehicles to have the best possible impact on the environment!
