Record Home Battery Power
Sunrun and Tesla Batteries Deliver Record Megawatts to California Grid
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Sunrun and Tesla said their fleets of more than 140,000 home batteries supplied a record 580 megawatts of peak power to California’s grid during a three-hour evening dispatch on Sept. 9, 2026, amid extreme heat and elevated electricity demand. The output included 517 megawatts from 110,000 Tesla Powerwalls and 63 megawatts from more than 30,000 other batteries dispatched by Sunrun, providing capacity comparable to the peak household demand of Sacramento County. The dispatch was requested by state regulators and utilities through California’s Demand Side Grid Support and Emergency Load Reduction programs to bolster grid reliability and potentially reduce wholesale electricity prices. Sunrun and Tesla also delivered more than 140 megawatts during a separate dispatch the following evening. The companies said distributed-battery programs could generate as much as $206 million in net savings for Californians by 2028, though that estimate comes from a report commissioned by Sunrun and Tesla.
Key Points
1
Sunrun owned and operated 55% of the 110,000 Tesla Powerwalls that participated in the Sept. 9 dispatch.
2
The Demand Side Grid Support dispatch was triggered after California’s day-ahead locational marginal price exceeded $200 per megawatt-hour; Pacific Gas & Electric separately called the Emergency Load Reduction Program dispatch to coincide with the heat wave.
3
The participating batteries were distributed across the service territories of all three of California’s investor-owned utilities, while Southern California Edison requested the separate three-hour dispatch on Sept. 10.
4
The battery programs directly compensate participating customers for the electricity they share with the grid, according to the companies’ description of the Brattle Group analysis.
5
Sunrun, Tesla and Renew Home are also planning to enroll nearly 21,000 existing flexible-energy devices in a Google-funded distributed power plant with PG&E, expected to begin supporting the grid in fall 2026.
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