Tesla has partnered with utility company PG&E in an attempt to build the world’s biggest distributed power grid to protect the state against outages caused by droughts and fires.
After a series of blackouts caused by extreme weather conditions during the last decade, the partnership aims to end the state’s dependence on a small number of large power stations by creating a backup energy grid powered by energy stored in residents’ Tesla Powerwall home battery systems.
The idea is that, in the event of future blackouts, PG&E will be able to use the distributed system to send power across the state.
The companies are looking for PG&E customers to sign up to the crowdsourced scheme. Once they have a Tesla Powerwall installed, which stores solar energy collected from roof-top panels, customers can choose to allocated a small percentage of their energy to the scheme, which is referred to as the Emergency Load Reduction Program.
Members of the scheme will be paid $2 for each kWh of energy that they put back into the system, allowing them to monetise their at-home green energy source. Within the scheme’s app, members are able to choose how much energy they are happy to put back into the Emergency Load Reduction Program.
When there is a blackout, or the traditional grid is struggling to deal with the energy demands, members will receive a notification to let them know about the emergency and invite them to allocate more energy to the cause.
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