What Investors Miss About Tesla Energy
For electric vehicle maker and renewable energy stalwart Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), batteries are a lousy way to make money. Lots of companies compete to make them cheaply, keeping batteries' profit margins low. To cash in on them, Tesla needs to add brains to batteries' brawn – and luckily for Tesla, its Autonomous Control software does exactly that.
When paired with renewables and storage, Tesla's software holds the power to disrupt the U.S.'s roughly $400 billion electric utility market and create a new era of abundant energy, distributed power, and virtual power plants – a massive opportunity that too many investors are completely overlooking.
The US grid suffers from polluting power plants, wasted electricity, and blackouts. It must also maintain a delicate balance-constantly predicting the exact power supply and demand. Solar and wind cannot solve these problems alone; these sources produce the most energy at a time with relatively low demand. But adding energy storage solves this intermittency problem, adds an extra margin of safety against blackouts, and reduces the grid's carbon footprint.
Source Fool.com
