Tesla’s new partnership with gas and electric company PG&E in California will give Powerwall owners the opportunity to earn money while giving energy back to the grid.
The virtual power plant (VPP) is a connection of distributed energy storage systems that work in tandem to give energy back to the grid to avoid dirty and costly peaker power plants. Essentially, when the grid is being strained, then the VPP can kick in and draw power from Powerwall owners enrolled in the program, and other distributed energy storage system owners, to use clean energy and avoid brownouts across the state.
Here are some of the advantages with this new VPP with PG&E:
Stabilize California’s Grid: The extra capacity your Powerwall provides could help avoid or reduce blackouts in a severe emergency. This way, Powerwall can keep the lights on for both you and your community.
Clean the Grid: Tesla will dispatch your Powerwall when the grid is in critical need of additional power. That is when the least efficient generators would typically come online.
Unite as a Tesla Community: Team up with other Powerwall owners who are accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy and help form the largest distributed battery in the world - potentially over 50,000 Powerwalls. As part of the VPP, your Powerwall will have an outsized positive impact on the grid over traditional demand response programs.
Maintain Your Energy Security: Powerwall will discharge during VPP events but won’t discharge below your Backup Reserve. Adjust your Backup Reserve to control your contribution while maintaining backup energy for outages.
Earn Compensation: Through the ELRP pilot, you will receive $2 for every additional kWh your Powerwall provides during an event. You don’t have to change your energy usage behavior to participate.
In 2021, Tesla piloted a test VPP program in California for Powerwall owners to voluntarily opt-in without compensation. The test VPP program would then pull energy from the Powerwalls when the grids needed it.
“Become a part of the largest distributed battery in the world and help keep California’s energy clean and reliable,” reads a statement from Tesla. “Opt-in to the Tesla Virtual Power Plant (VPP) with PG&E and your Powerwall will be dispatched when the grid needs emergency support. Through the Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot, you will receive $2 for every additional kWh your Powerwall delivers during an event. Adjust your Backup Reserve to set your contribution, while maintaining backup energy for outages.”
With Tesla and PG&E’s new VPP program owners will receive $2/kWh, which is quite significant. For comparison, where I live in Southern California, Tesla charges $0.58/kWh for supercharging during peak hours.
According to Electrek, “they could earn anywhere from $10 to $60 per event or more for bigger systems.”
Tesla stated that they have roughly 50,000 Powerwalls that may be eligible for this new program.
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Like clockwork, it’s time for the opportunity to submit questions for Tesla’s Q1 2025 Earnings Call. Q1 has historically been difficult for Tesla and other auto manufacturers in general, but doom-and-gloom aside, there’s plenty more to be excited about, including upcoming improvements to FSD and the first phase of Tesla’s Robotaxi network.
Earnings Q1 2025 Questions
Tesla is gearing up for its Q1 2025 Earnings Call, providing an opportunity for shareholders to once again submit and vote on questions they want to be addressed during the event. Tesla has already announced the lower-than-expected delivery numbers for Q1 2025, and also held a Public All-Hands Meeting for the first time, so we’re interested to find out what answers to some of these questions during their Q&A session.
Most Popular Questions
When will FSD unsupervised be available for personal use on personally-owned cars?
Is Tesla still on track for releasing “more affordable models” this year? Or will you be focusing on simplified versions to enhance affordability, similar to the RWD Cybertruck?
Robotaxi still on track for this year?
How is Tesla positioning itself to flexibly adapt to global economic risks in the form of tariffs, political biases, etc.?
Regarding the Tesla Optimus pilot line, could you confirm if it is currently operational? If so, what is the current production rate of Optimus bots per week? Additionally, how might the recent tariffs impact the scalability of this production line moving forward?
Did Tesla experience any meaningful changes in order inflow rate in Q1 relating to all of the rumors of “brand damage”?
When will Tesla Insurance be available in all 50 states. I’m from Idaho, and I’m surrounded by states where it is available, but it isn’t available in my state.
How is the company planning to deal with the impact of Elon’s partnership with the current administration?
is there a possibility of a stock split if so what would it be
Questions and voting are conducted through Say, a third-party platform that validates share ownership. Once your ownership is verified, you can use your shares to vote, with your vote weight corresponding to the number of shares you hold. Submitting a question initially gives it votes equivalent to your number of shares.
Below, we also compiled a list of the top questions going into the Earnings Call, which takes place a week from today.
The Earnings Call itself will take place on April 22, at 5:30 PM EDT (2:30 PM PT). Links to the live stream will be made available closer to the event. A recap of the key points will also be provided as usual, so stay tuned for that in the hours after the call.
With Q1 2025 now behind us, another round of Tesla’s Supercharger Voting has wrapped up. The previous vote took place back in December, and we now get to see which locations came out on top.
Let’s take a look at the Q1 2025 winners of the Supercharger Vote:
North America
🇺🇸 Lake Wales, FL
🇺🇸 Henderson, NV
🇺🇸 Clarksville, TN
🇺🇸 Roswell, NM
🇺🇸 Long Beach, CA
🇺🇸 Decatur, IL
🇺🇸 McAlester, OK
Europe
🇬🇧 Bournemouth, United Kingdom
🇮🇹 Bari, Italy
🇵🇱 Wrocław, Poland
🇨🇿 Hradec Králové, Czech Republic
Asia-Pacific
🇰🇷 Namyangju - South Korea
🇦🇺 Nicholls, Australia
Supercharger Voting Q2 2025
Another quarter means another round of Tesla's Supercharger Voting, giving Tesla owners the chance to influence where new Supercharger sites will be built. Following the Q1 2025 voting round, Tesla is now opening the polls for Q2 2025.
How to Vote
To participate in the Q2 2025 Supercharger Voting, visit the Tesla Supercharger Voting page and sign in to your Tesla account. You can vote for up to five different locations, with a limit of one vote per location, every three months. The most popular Superchargers are displayed on the leaderboard, and you can also suggest new locations for future voting cycles.
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