Tesla’s energy business is becoming a bigger part of its repertoire, and its Powerwall energy storage systems have become a regular part of discussions surrounding natural disasters in the past few years.
In a post on Twitter on Thursday, @Tesla Solar announced that its Powerwalls powered around 44,000 homes in Puerto Rico, averaging about five days of power while the country’s electrical grid was down.
The post included a retweet of one Nova Scotia resident’s Tesla Energy app, saying that the hardware had been providing power for 36 hours despite ongoing hurricane watches.
Powerwall powered 44k homes in Puerto Rico for an average of 5 days while the grid was down https://t.co/EwbgxFCRje
— Tesla Energy (@teslaenergy) October 27, 2022
During Hurricane Ian last month, a Tesla Powerwall was submerged in 10 feet of water for several hours, remaining on and working throughout the winds and rain.
Additionally, Tesla and California’s PG&E have begun holding “Virtual Power Plant” events in the past couple of months, in which Powerwall owners can send energy generated by solar back to the electrical grid during times of peak use.
During an event in September, the program had 3,600 homes contributing a total of 24MW of power back to the grid. A similar program has debuted in Japan and the company is already looking to start these programs elsewhere.
Last month, Hydro One launched a Tesla Powerwall pilot in Ontario, Canada, set to deploy battery-powered energy to homes during reliability issues.
