Inside Energy Storage: How Tesla’s Energy Storage Business Is Getting Off the Ground
If Elon Musk has is way, electric vehicles won’t be the only industry where Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) plays a leading role in revolutionizing energy as we know it. Earlier this year the company announced energy storage products called the Powerwall and Power Pack for residential and commercial customers, respectively.
To get a peek into how Tesla Motors is looking at energy storage and how its partners are viewing the products, I recently made a trip to one of Tesla Motors’ earliest energy storage partners to see how they’ve changed energy consumption with the help of Tesla. Their story shows the incredible opportunity and immense challenge Tesla Motors faces in upending the utility as we know it.
A partnership born in wine country
When Tesla Motors was looking for partners to test its energy storage product it turned about an hour north of Tesla Motors’ manufacturing facility to Jackson Family Wines in Windsor, California. The company owns over 30 wineries around the world and sustainability in energy is a major focus, not only for environmental reasons, but because it helps the bottom line. I got an opportunity to tour the La Crema Winery in Windsor where the company is testing a number of energy and water savings projects, which is how Tesla Motors got involved.
