Eaton, Tesla Plan Joint Effort Around Home Energy Storage
Power management company Eaton has announced a planned collaboration with Tesla that would support streamlining and retrofitting of home energy storage systems.
The strategy, announced September 9 at the RE+ 24 energy trade show in Anaheim, California, is designed around interoperability that would make it easier and faster for customers to integrate residential energy storage.
“With the rise of solar power, electric vehicle charging, energy storage and other innovations, homes can now fully participate in the energy transition—keeping the lights on, lowering carbon footprints and contributing to grid stability,” Rebecca Bitter, product line manager at Eaton, told POWER. “However, with numerous technologies on the market, ensuring seamless integration between all these modern systems is a complex challenge for both contractors and homeowners. That’s why at Eaton we’ve committed ourselves to simplifying the journey toward more dynamic home energy systems with fully integrated and interoperable solutions. Our collaboration with Tesla marks a significant milestone as we continue to advance our Home as a Grid strategy to accelerate the future of homes as resilient, self-sufficient energy hubs.”
The companies on Monday said they are targeting early 2025 for beginning the program. Tesla’s Powerwall would support Eaton’s new AbleEdge smart breakers and make it easier and faster for installers and homeowners to achieve intelligent load management functionality that helps optimize energy use and extend backup duration during a grid outage.
“Until now, installing energy storage with load management was a complex and time-consuming process. By leveraging the joint expertise and expansive installed base of Eaton and Tesla, we’re planning to bring a solution to the mainstream market that utilizes dynamic, automated energy load management to intelligently extend available battery duration in an outage,” said Paul Ryan, general manager of Connected Solutions and EV Charging at Eaton. “Ensuring your Powerwall and renewable energy assets can power precisely what you need, when you need it.”
The groups said the plan would align with Eaton’s “Home as a Grid” strategy “by creating flexible power systems that manage energy consumption in an integrated way and transforms what is possible for the home as an energy source.” The companies’ solutions are being displayed at RE+. POWER is a major partner of the event.
As part of the set-up, the companies said Eaton’s AbleEdge smart breakers will be able to be integrated into any Eaton BR load center and meter breaker in a flexible, scalable, and modular design optimized to reduce equipment cost and installation time. The Tesla Powerwall is expected to integrate with the Eaton smart breakers, and would provide energy storage with novel load management. The groups said the strategy is “Built upon a foundation of secure connectivity … the interoperable solution will help reduce complexity by enabling homeowners and installers to use Tesla’s app to install, commission and control both technologies.”
“This collaboration will enhance what’s possible within the home energy ecosystem, allowing our customers to get even more value from their Powerwall and solar and furthering our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” said James Bickford, Director Global Sales, Residential Energy Products at Tesla.
—Darrell Proctor is senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).