Puerto Ricans who own a Tesla Inc TSLA Powerwall can support their grid and get paid for it as well. There are about 75,000 Powerwall owners on the island whose grid relies heavily on fossil fuel.
What Happened: “In Puerto Rico, 75k Powerwall owners can now get paid to support the grid in what could become the largest virtual power plant ever,” Tesla wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Customers can join the Battery Emergency Demand Response Program and their Powerwall will be dispatched to support the grid when it needs it most. For every kWh supplied to the grid in these events, the customer can earn $1. This way, it acts as a virtual power plant.
Once enrolled in the program, Tesla will call upon the virtual power plant when the operator does not have adequate capacity to support the grid. “Your utility and Tesla may also call events at other times to meet the program minimum of 50 events per program year,” Tesla added on its website.
The Powerwall, an integrated battery system developed by Tesla, is designed to store solar energy for backup purposes, providing protection against power outages and grid failures.
Why It Matters: The move will help stabilize Puerto Rico’s grid and reduce blackouts in a severe emergency. Even while supplying to the grid, the Powerwall will never discharge below the set backup reserve, meaning customers will have backup energy for outages.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had offered to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electricity system as far back as October 2017.
“The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR,” Musk then wrote.
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