TEXAS — Tesla is looking to get into the Texas energy game and has submitted an application to the Public Utility Commission to sell directly to customers, it was first reported by Texas Monthly.

What You Need To Know

  • Tesla has submitted an application with the Public Utility Commission to become a Texas energy provider

  • The company is already working on a 100-megawatt storage system near Houston that could be connected to the Texas power grid  

  • The application comes in the wake of the February power grid failure that resulted in millions of Texans losing power during a winter storm 

The application, submitted by a Tesla subsidiary called Tesla Energy Ventures, comes as the company is in the process of installing a 100-megawatt energy storage system in Angleton, near Houston, that is supposed to connect to the Texas power grid.

More importantly, the application comes in the wake of the near-total collapse of the power grid in February that left millions of Texans without power. It’s now believed 210 people died in the wake of the storm, many of them from hypothermia.

The Texas power grid is independent from the grids in place in most of the rest of the country and is overseen by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, commonly referred to as ERCOT.

While some politicians blamed wind, solar and other renewable energy sources for the February power failure, most of the state’s energy comes from fossil fuels.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk in February took issue with ERCOT, tweeting, “ERCOT_ISO is not earning that R.”