Tesla Energy

Just a week after the first Tesla Powerwall for residential use in Australia has reportedly been installed in a Sydney suburb, we learn the company is launching a recruitment drive in Melbourne and Sydney to increase its ‘Tesla Energy’ team in the country.
Expand
Expanding
Close

As Tesla Motors is just starting to ramp up its ‘Tesla Energy’ division, we learn that the company is already planning to release a second generation Powerwall, its home energy storage system, during summer 2016.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The first Tesla Powerwall for residential use in Australia has reportedly been installed in a Sydney suburb this week. Nick Pfitzner was one of the first to reserve an installation with Natural Solar, an official Tesla Energy distributor, and the Pfitzner family finally received their home battery pack this week.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Sprig Electric, an electrical and data system contractor, announced the installation of a new Tesla Powerpack and solar panel system at its headquarters in San Jose. In a press release, the company revealed the details of the installation, which illustrate the potential of combining solar and energy storage for commercial projects.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Mateo Jaramillo is a veteran at Tesla. He joined the automaker in 2009 as commercial lead on OEM powertrain sales for development and production contracts, and he became Director of ‘Tesla Energy’ when the company started the division in 2014 – before launching the product line in April 2015.

He was recently promoted to ‘Vice President Products & Programs – Tesla Energy’ as the company is ramping up its effort in stationary energy storage. Around the same time that Tesla promoted Jaramillo, the company also hired Trinasolar’s President of Europe and Africa, Ben Hill, to lead its energy division in same the markets.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla clearly states that the installation of a Powerwall requires knowledge of high voltage electricity and should only be executed by Tesla Energy Certified installers, but for the sake of sharing the information, here’s the step by step instructions to install the Powerwall as well as its user manual.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla started testing the Powewall, its home battery system, with “pilot customers” last summer. At the time, a Tesla spokesperson told Electrek that the 7 kWh version of the battery pack was in production and that over the next few weeks they would “continue to ramp up to volume production”, but a few weeks later, the company moved the production line of its Tesla Energy products to the Gigafactory in Nevada, which delayed the ramp up of production.
Expand
Expanding
Close

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk first announced the Gigafactory project, he said that even though the planned capacity of the factory is equal to the entire global production of lithium-ion batteries in 2013, the world would sill need around 200 more giant factories of similar size to support the auto industry’s transition from fossil fuels to electric.

Tesla named the factory in Nevada: “Gigafactory 1”, implying that the company plans to eventually introduce “Gigafactory 2” and so on. Late last year, German Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel confirmed being in contact with Elon Musk over the possibility of building a battery factory in the country. Now we learn that Tesla is also reportedly in talks to build another Gigafactory in South Africa.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Local South African news is reporting that Tesla is planning to open an office in the country in early 2016. The company will first aim at developing the market for its ‘Tesla Energy’ products: the Powerwall and Powerpack.

There’s currently no word on Tesla bringing its vehicles to South Africa. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Sonnenbatterie is the leader in home energy storage in Europe. The company is expected to represent a serious competitor to ‘Tesla Energy’ in Germany, which the automaker sees as an important market for energy storage due to the popularity of renewable energy in the country. Tesla’s head in Germany, as well as several managers, defected to Sonnenbattarie earlier this summer – hinting at a possible rivalry between the two companies.

At a press conference in Berlin today, Sonnenbatterie announced a new home battery pack, as well as a new solar panel/battery package and everyone want to know how it fares against Tesla’s Powerwall.
Expand
Expanding
Close

While doing some related LinkedIn research, we found out that Ben Hill, Trinasolar’s President of Europe and Africa, recently left the company to lead Tesla’s Energy division in same the markets.

Trinasolar is one of the largest solar module manufacturers in the world. The company shipped 3.6 GW of modules last year and over 11 GW since its inception in 1997.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla has already begun production at their $5 billion battery factory, according to the company’s third quarter 2015 shareholder letter. In October, production of Tesla’s Powerpacks and Powerwalls moved from Fremont to an automated assembly line at the Gigafactory.
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune, Tesla inked a deal to install battery packs at 3 Escondido high schools in the San Diego County school districts. The 3 projects are approved to start installation in a few weeks and be completed by the end of the year – making the deal one of the biggest to date for Tesla’s new energy storage products.
Expand
Expanding
Close

A few weeks ago, Tesla Motors launched “Tesla Energy” by unveiling a new product series of home battery packs and energy storage products for commercial and utility scale use. JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO, said Tesla has been working on the project for a long time. We now learn that the project might have been longer in the making than we originally thought. We uncover a blog post by former Tesla CEO, Martin Eberhard, dating May 22nd, 2007 that was removed from Tesla’s website. The post is titled “Introducing Tesla Energy Group”.

Expand
Expanding
Close