Richard Hawkes’ house, nestled in Kent, England, is home to a new era of Tesla technology.
The architect’s green house, which appeared in a 2009 episode of the British housing construction show Grand Designs, is one of 65,000 worldwide certified buildings like Passivhaus, which means it uses minimal energy for heating and cooling.
In March 2020, he signed up for the Tesla Energy plan. It is an energy tariff introduced by retail partner Tesla Octopus Energy in November 2019 and launched to the general public in October 2020.
It can be a useful way to reduce energy bills for green homes, but it also shows how Tesla goes beyond just selling energy products to consumers.
Want to know more about Hawkes’ cost savings, how it worked as part of its green home of the future, and what the plan for Tesla’s future ambitions means? Read the full interview only in READ MUSK +.
The Tesla Energy Plan is for people who own solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall battery. The battery stores solar energy so that it can power the house even when the sun is not shining.
With this plan, customers agree to hand over control of their home’s Powerwall. The battery then sends electricity to the grid when it is most needed and picks up electricity from the grid when it is cheaper. Other factors, such as personal energy use patterns and weather forecasts, are used to decide when to send energy.
It also claims to offer savings of up to 75 per cent compared to the UK’s “big six” energy suppliers. So far, Hawkes is happy.
“The Tesla plan was great,” says Hawkes Inverse.
Hawkes’ house has two solar arrays. There is a 4.5 kilowatt array installed by The Little Green Energy Company and a 3.5 kilowatt PVT panel. These PVT panels combine electricity-generating photovoltaic panels with heat-generating heat panels in a single module.
Although Hawkes regularly changes his house to make it more energy efficient, he is happy to give up control of the Powerwall.
“I’m kind of tired of having my own control system,” says Hawkes. “Handing over all the control to Octopus and knowing that when I connect my car, when I turn on the oven, whatever it is, it manages everything. If it happens to be rush hour, then they have it so that my house can use it from the battery at that time to keep me away from the network. ”
But the plan is more than a small benefit for Tesla users. With CEO Elon Musk aiming to dramatically expand the size of Tesla’s energy business, the plan is part of the company’s quiet move to build invisible “virtual power plants.”
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