Tesla launches virtual power plant in Puerto Rico, could become world’s biggest

Tesla has officially launched its virtual power plant in Puerto Rico and it could quickly become the world’s biggest thanks to the large Powerwall user base in the region.

Virtual power plants (VPP) consist of aggregating distributed energy assets, primarily rooftop solar and home energy storage, to offer grid services like peak shaving.

A company like Tesla pulls power from those customer assets to help the grid when needed and compensate the customers in return. Together, they become a virtual power plant.

It’s a way to help the grid and make distributed energy assets more profitable.

As we previously stated, VPPs are becoming one of Tesla’s most underappreciated products.

The company’s California virtual power plant has already proved successful in its first year. Tesla recently launched a new one in Texas that looks to be quite profitable for Powerwall owners.

Earlier this summer, we reported that Tesla got the greenlight to launch one in Puerto Rico.

This one is very exciting because Puerto Rico badly needs a more stable grid and Tesla’s VPP could quickly become useful as the automaker already has a large fleet of Powerwalls in the region.

Today, Tesla announced that the Puerto Rico VPP has officially launched in partnership with Sunova and Sunrun:

The company also ocnfirmed that there are already 75,000 Powerwall owners in the region that can sign up to the VPP directly through the Tesla app.

Drew Baglino, Tesla’ SVP of engineering, said that it could become the world’s largest virtual power plant:

Excited to be working alongside our partners, Sunova Energy and SunRun, and Powerwall customers to make this the biggest VPP in the world (potential over 300MW) and rapidly reduce the frequency and duration of grid outages in Puerto Rico.

We will track the project in the coming months to see how many people sign up and how close Tesla can get to the 300 MW mark.