Tesla's Virtual Power Plant Had Its First Event Helping the Grid

Klaxton shares a report from Electrek: Last year, Tesla launched a VPP pilot program in California, where Powerwall owners would join in voluntarily without compensation to let the VPP pull power from their battery packs when the grid needed it. Following the pilot program, Tesla and PG&E, the electric utility covering Northern California, launched the first official virtual power plant through the Tesla app in June. This new version of the Tesla Virtual Power Plant actually compensates Powerwall owners $2 per kWh that they contribute to the grid during emergency load reduction events. Homeowners are expected to get between $10 and $60 per event. Earlier this week, Tesla's California VPP expanded to Southern California Edison (SCE) to now cover most of the state. Just days later, the Tesla VPP had its first emergency response event. Tesla reached out to Powerwall owners who opted in the program through its app yesterday to warn them of the event and give them the option to opt-out if they needed all the power from their Powerwalls today. It looks like 2,342 Powerwall owners participated in the event on the PG&E network and 268 homes on the SCE grid. For PG&E, Tesla's VPP was outputting as much as 16 MW of power at one point during the event -- acting as a small distributed power plant.

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