Previously, Tesla helped launch a VPP in South Australia, where 3,000 home energy systems were installed in social housing. At the time, that project was also touted as the world's largest. But with 50,000 Powerwalls installed by households in PG&E's service region, the California initiative's potential is a massive scale-up.
Of course, all those 50,000 nodes in the distributed battery are consumers who need to be convinced to participate. Tesla and PG&E aren't pitching the Emergency Load Reduction Program as an opportunity for households to earn a bit of extra cash. They're appealing to people's sense of solidarity (and perhaps their concerns about multiday blackouts), explaining how each Powerwall's extra capacity can help stabilize California's power grid.
