Photo: Tesla
@Tesla announced on Monday that it has reached 500,000 solar panel and solar roof installations, equating to around 4GW of clean energy.
Tesla paused all solar roof installations in July, with some onlookers citing potential supply issues as a cause for the halt.
In September, Tesla began requiring the purchase of a Powerwall with all solar installation projects, though CEO Elon Musk also said that it should become possible to buy a Powerwall without solar by the end of the year.
Tesla Solar Roof Withstands Hurricane Winds, Powerwall Survives Being Underwater for Hours https://t.co/TRKvf4Z8uJ
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) September 30, 2022
Musk has also said that Tesla eventually hopes to produce around 1,000 solar roofs per week, though reports from earlier this year show production topping out around 23 solar roofs per week.
The news also comes just a week after Tesla was approved to run Virtual Power Plant events in Texas, during which solar and Powerwall users can get paid for sending stored electricity back to the state’s electrical grid. This approval resulted in the launch of Tesla Electric in Texas, with expansion soon to come.
In essence, the Virtual Power Plants create a large, distributed battery out of homes across a region, like one VPP event that took place in California with over 3,600 homes contributing power.
