LUMA, a Puerto Rico electric utility, has received the green light to build a virtual power plant (VPP) with Tesla Powerwalls in Puerto Rico.
It should help with the territory’s major issues amid heat waves.
Puerto Rico was an early market for Powerwalls.
Following the island’s electric grid being badly affected by a hurricane back in 2017, Tesla concentrated its at-the-time limited supply of Powerwalls to Puerto Rico.
Last year, Tesla said that Powerwalls were powering over 44,000 homes in Puerto Rico.
More recently, Drew Baglino, Tesla’s head of engineering, that VPPs would be soon coming to Puerto Rico and Texas, and he confirmed that Tesla had 350 MW of capacity in the former through Powerwalls.
That would mean about 50,000 Powerwalls in the territory.
This week, the Puerto Rico Tesla VPP is becoming closer to reality as the local Energy Bureau issued a new order to authorize Luma Energy to build the Powerwall-backed VPP in Puerto Rico.
Arushi Sharma Frank, energy markets policy lead and senior counsel at Tesla, commented on the new order:
The order came the same day that Luma warned of potential brownouts throughout its network due to high demand because of a heat wave.
If the VPP was in operation, Tesla Powerwall owners could potentially reduce the peak demand by up to 350 MW and potentially avoid brownouts in the territory.
Those owners would also get compensated for saving the grid on those occasions – making Powerwalls more financially viable.
Tesla’s California virtual power plant has already proved successful in its first year, and the company is also launching two new VPPs in Texas.