Tesla Launches UK Energy Plan

Tesla has launched its Energy Plan in the United Kingdom, which could make it a major player in the UK’s utility industry. IT professional and environmentalist Mark W. Tebutt posted screenshots of an email he received from Tesla about the Energy Plan on Twitter.

Tesla will implement its Energy Plan in partnership with Octopus Energy. Octopus Energy’s plans for its business includes delivering electric power that, according to its website, will “disrupt the status quo with energy that’s good for the planet, good for your wallet, and honestly, good for your soul.”

Tesla plans to sell power at 11 pence per kilowatt-hour for non-Tesla owners and discount that to 8 pence per kilowatt-hour for Tesla owners. Octopus Energy says this is the lowest import, or charging, rate offered by utility companies in the UK.

Although Tesla’s solar roofs are not yet available in the UK, the Energy Plan also works with Tesla’s Powerwalls and solar panels. The email does not seem to indicate whether the plan will work with devices that aren’t produced by Tesla.

Tesla’s plans in the UK includes using its Megapacks to store energy produced by renewable sources to help balance the power grid during peak hours. The Megapacks are already in use in some places such as the Holes Bay energy storage plant in Dorset. Elon Musk has cited batteries like the Megapacks as an important component in sustainable energy production and usage.

“There’s like three elements of the sustainable energy future. Wind and solar sustainable energy generation, battery storage, and electric transport. Those three things. And the mission of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy. So that kind of says enough.”

This goal, along with criticism that Tesla vehicles still make use of energy produced by coal, may have sparked Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. Tesla’s actions, which include partnering with companies like Fastned to build solar powered charging stations and sourcing low-carbon nickel from Canadian mining companies, could be seen as a sharp response to the critics that Tesla and Musk take sustainably seriously.

It may sometimes seem like the solar power wing of Tesla has been lurking in the shadows. This has led one critic and reporter named Linette Lopez to express doubts that the Powerwall even exists, all because she’s never actually seen one. She has apparently deleted those tweets since, possibly due to backlash basically saying that just because you’ve never seen them doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Of course, somebody got screenshots.

Such criticism doesn’t seem to slow Elon Musk or Tesla down much, however. Solar Roof V3 installations have been accelerating fast in regions where Solar Roofs are available. Total deployments of the energy products formerly produced by SolarCity and (now) improved upon by Tesla have reached a total production capacity of 759 MWh.

Tesla’s expansion of its Energy Plan to the United Kingdom will help it ramp that capacity up still further, even in regions like the northern latitudes where it may not necessarily seem like solar power is viable. The Powerwall and Megapack components will be critical components of this plan for their ability to store power for balancing the energy grid.