Driving to a Fully Renewable Grid

Tesla Power & Light

BY MARTIN ROSENBERG
Editor-in-chief, EnergyBiz

Tesla has teamed up with SolarCity to help energy users firm up their power supply and deal with utility-imposed demand charges. EnergyBiz recently interviewed JB Straubel, Tesla co-founder and chief technology officer. His edited comments follow.

ENERGYBIZ: Tesla is getting involved with SolarCity to provide it with a more robust solution to use in meeting customers' needs. How does Tesla view the relationship?


JB Straubel

STRAUBEL: For several years, Tesla has been working on getting into the stationary energy storage business by developing and refining storage products. The work derives from our engineering, core competency and expertise with automobile technology.

ENERGYBIZ: How will this work?

STRAUBEL: We see a huge opportunity to further enable renewable energy and efficient demand management for buildings and houses. With SolarCity, we see an opportunity to partner with a great company to help us with sales and distribution for some of these products. They have an excellent understanding of customers' needs, the products' needs and the installation complexities.

ENERGYBIZ: Energy customers of utilities, even if they turn increasingly to renewables, are subject to rising demand charges. How does your product help them with that?

STRAUBEL: The product offers utilities' commercial customers a way to manage their own demand charges more proactively and save money doing it. The demand charge is a portion of the electric bill that, historically, has not been easy to address with renewables. That's what we are going after.

ENERGYBIZ: To what extent should utilities see the new stationary products as a threat? To what extent should they be looking to collaborate with you and SolarCity?

STRAUBEL: Stationary products can represent an opportunity. This is about making the electric grid more robust and function even better, especially as more renewables are added to it. We see a future in which renewables become cost-competitive with fossil fuel and traditional generation everywhere. But there is a limit. You can't make renewables 100 percent of your energy mix without storage. That's intuitive. Our long-term goal is to invent ways to solve storage problems to facilitate a 100 percent renewable grid. That shouldn't threaten utilities. It's the logical and future evolution of the grid. Utilities have a key part in this. Our role is to invent and improve the products that make a 100 percent renewable grid possible.

ENERGYBIZ: How far are we from being capable of relying on 100 percent renewable grid?

STRAUBEL: We are surprisingly close to reaching an economic point that would make reliance on a 100 percent renewable grid compelling or, at least, cheaper. It will take a long time to change out the infrastructure, replacing, upgrading and retiring old assets. The first thing that will happen is the cost will cross the economic threshold where it is cheaper to install renewables and storage than to install new fossil-fuel generation. That's already happening in island grids and in island nations. That's where 100 percent renewable grids will happen first. We are a few decades away from seeing a major shift and the adoption of storage sufficient to drive renewables higher.

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