--- title: "Tesla Reportedly Hooking Up Giant Battery to Texas’ Failed Grid" description: "Texas Battery According to drone images taken earlier this month, Tesla might be attempting to plug in a massive mega-battery into Texas’ failed electricity grid, Bloomberg reports. Bloomberg suggests Tesla’s rumored battery could provide enough power for about “20,000 homes on a hot summer day.” While Tesla hasn’t confirmed it is indeed behind the battery, […]" date: "2021-03-08" modified: "2021-03-08" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-giant-battery-texas-grid" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Tesla" tags: - "elon musk" - "telsa" - "texas" - "the digest" --- # Tesla Reportedly Hooking Up Giant Battery to Texas’ Failed Grid ![According to drone images taken earlier this month, Tesla might be attempting to plug in a massive mega-battery into Texas' failed electricity grid.]() *\Image: Tesla\* ## Texas Battery According to drone images taken earlier this month, Tesla might be attempting to plug a massive mega-battery into Texas' failed electric grid, [*Bloomberg* reports](). *Bloomberg* suggests that Tesla's rumored battery, which is being constructed outside of Houston, could provide enough power for about "20,000 homes on a hot summer day." While Tesla hasn't confirmed that it is indeed behind the battery, publicly available property records on file with the local Brazoria County show that Tesla subsidiary Gambit is orchestrating the project. ## Unreliable About two million Texans lost access to electricity last month, as a result of a highly unusual deep freeze that forced the state's electric grid to come [eerily close]() to a complete collapse. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently relocated to the Lone Star state, [mocked]() the state’s energy agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), at the time for "not earning that R." ## Emergency Power As Tesla's Megapack battery farm in New South Wales, Australia, has already demonstrated, the electric car company is more than capable of supplementing an electricity grid with backup power — so the news of a similar battery in Texas doesn't exactly come as a shock. Tesla also operates a similar 20 megawatt battery pack near its factory in Fremont, California. It's also [currently constructing ]()a much larger 182.5 megawatt system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Supplying Texans with stored power from a mega-battery network during the next catastrophe isn't necessarily a long term solution, let alone a particularly feasible one. But it does illustrate that we have the technology to ensure that not one more Texan has to freeze to death during the next cold snap. **READ MORE:** [Tesla Is Plugging a Secret Mega-Battery Into the Texas Grid]() \[*Bloomberg*\] **More on Tesla:** *[Elon Musk Praises Tesla Nemesis, Ford, In Rare Reversal]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()