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A few days ago, CEO Elon Musk said in a conference call that running energy storage plants with Tesla batteries on their own rather than on behalf of customers is not excluded for him, but not due to limitations in weather. However, from the UK, there is now a message that seems to contradict at least part of it: Tesla has applied to the British energy regulator for a license as an electricity producer, reports The Telegraph newspaper, citing the request it received. It was presented in the first week of May and signed by Tesla’s energy sales manager for the European region.
Tesla app brings speculation
The document itself says there is no reason to apply for the public service license, according to the report. However, informed industry sources have reportedly indicated that Tesla plans to enter the UK market with its technology. Neither the Telegraph nor any other media outlet investigating to report it received official information from Tesla.
In this regard, the news initially caused speculation. According to Telegraph, Tesla plans to use its Autobidder software in the United Kingdom. It is a platform for automated electricity trading that, according to Tesla, enables the “autonomous monetization of battery assets.” The background is that prices in the electricity market fluctuate strongly during the day and year. With wireless systems, it is possible to save cheap electricity in case of oversupply and sell it expensive when demand is high.
The Autobidder platform is already in use in Australia’s Hornsdale Battery Reserve, built by Tesla and the Neoen Power Company and the largest of its kind worldwide. According to Tesla, it has brought the operator high revenues and reduced electricity costs for consumers. With price, load and production forecasts, as well as artificial intelligence, automatic bidders automate participation in the electricity market in real time on any scale.
Tesla as a community electricity aggregator
In addition to stationary home batteries up to the scale of the power plant, Tesla also offers photovoltaic systems for private and corporate customers. With large facilities on its own, the company could also act as a power generator in the strictest sense, but nothing has been known about such activities or batteries in Britain. However, a project was also started in Australia in which thousands of homes with Tesla photovoltaics and household batteries are interconnected to form a virtual power plant. It would be conceivable for Tesla to approach the British market with a similar model: The company would not be able to operate solar systems and capital intensive storage, but it could appear on the market as an aggregator of many individual networked systems supported by Autobidder.
