Energy
Why Tesla’s microgrid project is life changing for Ta’u’s island community
Tesla’s subsidiary, SolarCity, is at the end of a one-year solar energy microgrid project on the American Samoa island of Ta’u that, at 1.4 megawatts, can cover “nearly 100%” of its 600 residents’ electrical needs. Its benefits may be life changing for residents of Ta’u.
Ta’u is a rectangular island 10 km. long and 5 km. wide. In the distant geologic past, the south side of Ta’u collapsed, leaving dramatic 500 km. high cliffs that rise directly from the southern sea. Craters punctuate the island’s wild, thickly forested interior, known for its steep slopes and gullies. Terrain and bush can change quickly, and most of the upland area is inaccessible. American Samoa was first visited by European explorers in the 18th century, but its islands have been inhabited for over 3000 years. Today, at about 340 persons per square km., American Samoa is the second most densely populated South Pacific entity, after Tuvalu.
The island’s residents have acquired power to date largely through generators fueled by diesel. Diesel in itself is made from chemicals including sulfates, ammonium, nitrates, elemental carbon, condensed organic compounds, and even carcinogenic compounds rich in heavy metals such as arsenic, selenium, cadmium and zinc. Diesel exhaust poses major health hazards, contributes to climate change, is costly to ship, and can lead to frequent temporary blackouts. With a dramatic decrease on diesel reliance, Ta’u, through the SolarCity renewable microgrid, will experience valuable community life enhancements that can increase local control and community independence.
Grid stability in a remote location
Energy efficiency is an important component of a renewable microgrid transition. Energy storage is key to renewable island and remote community microgrids. The Ta’u integrated microgrid –- 1.4 megawatts of solar power and 6 megawatt hours of battery storage from 60 Tesla Powerpack, alongside smart controls to enable load shifting— will become an important component of the Ta’u community’s transition to energy independence.
Maintaining grid stability with renewable integration has proved challenging in many other remote island cases in which energy reliance has shifted to a microgrid. SolarCity will likely use a phased integration approach that will initially bring a small amount of renewable technologies online, as it works to balance the system, and then continue to step up their renewable penetration by integrating more solar resources alongside energy storage and advanced controls. For example, on King Island, Australia, Hydro Tasmania has overcome many renewable integration challenges to incorporate more renewable resources into the system. Simon Gamble recalls, “We started adding renewables 18 or 19 years ago, and the challenges have been technical. We had to solve the problems we uncovered as we went.”
Tesla’s Powerpack system will allow the island to use stored solar energy at night, meaning renewable energy is available for use around the clock. Procuring and transporting new technologies and equipment, which has been an issue with other remote island locations that have integrated a renewable energy microgrid, may not present as many challenges for Ta’u, due to the SolarCity involvement. Often, only one or two operators live nearby, so if major technical issues arise, teams must fly in to address the problems. Having SolarCity as a partner can diminish such technical issues on Ta’u.
How a SolarCity microgrid can alter traditional microgrid instability
Although some renewable systems have found success, other communities face challenges transitioning from a fossil fuel reliance to a microgrid. A SolarCity microgrid has the capacity to overcome these challenges due to the influence and reliability of Tesla Energy. Microgrid systems foster community resiliency and stability. Power electronics and control systems enable a more stable grid through better controls. At the same time, relying more on local resources and less on imported diesel increases overall resiliency for the Ta’u community.
Transitioning to renewable microgrids can reduce costs. Research indicates that relying on more diversely and renewably powered microgrids has led to reduced diesel usage, electricity prices, and operating costs. Creating a project like the SolarCity microgrid on Ta’u, with the requisite business plan to lower overall costs and attract investment, is a difficult and lengthy task. However, it has clearly been made easier with SolarCity’s deep understanding of inherent necessary technologies, processes, and pitfalls.
Protecting the Ta’u culture through energy independence
Fa’a Samoa or the Samoan Way is the foundation of Samoan society, culture, and heritage. Fa’a Samoa customs and culture are over 3000 years old and have changed very little over this period. The Fa’a is tenaciously defended by those who have chosen to remain in their home villages rather than to emigrate to the U.S. Fa’a culture and customs are based around the mutual respect given to elders, the church, visitors, and the extended family. The SolarCity grid will enhance the Fa’s or Samoan Way and reinforce the foundation of Samoan society, culture, and heritage.
SolarCity, alongside American Samoan and U.S. authorities, including the Department of Interior, has provided the upfront costs of designing, delivering, installing, and maintaining the solar microgrid. Their customers on Ta’u will pay a fixed monthly fee for clean solar power and start realizing cost savings from day one without the hassle of owning and maintaining their own power system. Removing the hazards of power intermittency will offer a tremendous difference in the lives of Ta’u residents.
“I recall a time they weren’t able to get the boat out here for two months,” said Keith Ahsoon, a local resident whose family owns one of the food stores on the island. “We rely on that boat for everything, including importing diesel for the generators for all of our electricity. Once diesel gets low, we try to save it by using it only for mornings and afternoons. Water systems here also use pumps, everyone in the village uses and depends on that. It’s hard to live not knowing what’s going to happen. I remember growing up using candlelight. And now, in 2016, we were still experiencing the same problems.”
Sources: American Samoa, Renewable Microgrids
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Elon Musk
Google just picked SpaceX for its first step into orbital AI
Google will launch its first Project Suncatcher AI satellite on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare next week.
Google is about to put its own AI chips into orbit for the first time, and it is paying SpaceX to get them there.
The company said Thursday that the first in-orbit test of Project Suncatcher, its research effort to find out whether space can host large-scale AI computing, will fly next week on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
The satellite, called MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator and carries four of Google’s Tensor Processing Units, the same chips Google runs in its ground data centers. Google originally planned to launch two custom satellites in 2027, but chose to move faster by integrating its chips into a satellite.
MVP’s solar panels supply about one kilowatt of power, and Google will run Gemini models on the TPUs only in bursts of roughly 15 minutes before the chips shut down so the radiators can shed heat. In a blog post, Google said its Trillium TPUs survived vibration testing that mimicked sustained launch loads of up to 10g, with individual components seeing 50 to 100g, and handled a radiation dose greater than a five year mission would deliver.
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Next week’s flight, slated for October 1, follows a relationship that became public in May, when Teslarati reported that Google was in talks with SpaceX for a launch deal tied to orbital data centers. Google also holds a stake of roughly 6% in SpaceX.
The two companies are chasing the same idea from very different starting points. SpaceX’s own orbital compute program is built around the AI1 satellite, a roughly 70 meter structure derived from Starlink V3 hardware that is designed for 150 kW of peak compute, about 150 times the power MVP will draw. Elon Musk has brushed off concerns about crowding orbit with those satellites, and SpaceX is building its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, to produce them, targeting an annualized rate of about 1 GW of space compute by the end of 2027.
Musk also posted on X on Thursday that “the amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute.”
Google has been more cautious in public. Its research estimates that launch prices need to fall below about $200 per kilogram before an orbital data center can compete with a ground facility on energy cost, a threshold the company believes could be reached around the mid 2030s. The Suncatcher team has said it expects the effort to remain a project rather than a product for years, which leaves the first real test of its hardware riding on a rocket from the company with the most aggressive timeline in the field.
Energy
Tesla Semi factory is getting a celebration nobody expected
Tesla will inaugurate its Nevada Semi factory September 24, five months after production quietly began ramping.
Tesla says it will officially inaugurate its new Semi factory in Nevada next month. The Tesla Semi account posted the announcement on X, sharing a graphic titled “Semi Rollout” with a date of September 24. No further details were given about the format of the event or who would attend.
While Tesla’s dedicated Semi plant in Sparks, adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada, opened back in April, with the first trucks rolling off the high volume line on April 29, the timing for the factory inauguration comes at a surprise. The ribbon cutting event five months into production is a break from how Tesla has usually handled its other factories, where the first truck or car off the line typically served as the milestone moment.
Inauguration of new Semi factory in Nevada next month pic.twitter.com/a8kAlxrOOn
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) August 24, 2026
The 1.7 million square foot factory was built as part of a $3.6 billion expansion Tesla announced in early 2023, and it shares a site with the battery cell lines that feed the Semi’s structural pack, a decision meant to remove the supply bottleneck that delayed the truck for years. The plant is designed for 50,000 trucks a year at full ramp. Semi program director Dan Priestley has said production “is now ramping” rather than claiming it has reached scale.
Nine years passed between the Semi’s 2017 unveiling and this stage of production, with the truck slipping from an original 2019 target through hand built pilot units for PepsiCo and a slow build out of the Nevada plant. An inauguration event now gives Tesla a stage to talk up that ramp and reset expectations for how many trucks it can begin delivering at scale.
The September date also lines up with the Semi’s next milestone. Tesla confirmed the truck is heading to Europe with a full unveiling at the IAA Transportation trade show in Hannover, Germany, running September 15 through 20. Between the Nevada event and the Hannover reveal, Tesla has roughly a week and a half in September to make the case that the Semi is now a truck being built and sold on two continents rather than tested in a handful of fleets.
Tesla Energy has introduced the Powerwall Lease in conjunction with Tesla Electric, making the service available in Texas. This new option delivers whole-home backup power using two Powerwall units for a net monthly cost of $35 after credits, accompanied by a low fixed electricity rate.
Under the lease terms, customers pay a one-time order fee of $100. The base lease payment for the two Powerwalls is approximately $122 per month during the first year, subject to a 3 percent annual escalator thereafter. Enrollment in a qualifying Tesla Electric Backup plan or Virtual Power Plant plan provides an $87 monthly credit.
Powerwall Lease is now available with Tesla Electric in Texas
Whole-home backup for $35/month, with a low fixed electricity rate
– Two Powerwalls, $0 installation
– Storm Watch outage protection
– One app to manage it all pic.twitter.com/oTzqc6K3aF— Tesla Energy (@teslaenergy) August 13, 2026
This credit lowers the effective cost to roughly $35 per month plus applicable tax.
Installation of the standard system carries no additional charge. The package features Storm Watch for outage protection and allows complete management through a single Tesla application. The system supplies continuous whole-home backup capability.
The Powerwall system enables households to maintain electricity during severe storms that disrupt the utility grid. When outages occur, the batteries automatically provide seamless backup power to the home.
Tesla announces 100k Powerwalls are participating in Virtual Power Plants
Tesla Storm Watch monitors weather forecasts and ensures the units are fully charged ahead of anticipated severe weather events so that power remains available throughout the disruption, keeping lights, refrigeration, and other essential systems operating without interruption.
Availability is restricted to select Texas locations where retail electric choice exists. Participants must lease exactly two Powerwall units and maintain continuous enrollment with Tesla Electric. Solar panels cannot be included under this particular lease arrangement.
The monthly credit activates automatically once the system is installed, receives permission to operate, and enrollment is confirmed. To retain the credit, customers are required to stay enrolled in Tesla Electric and fulfill all program conditions.
Nonstandard installations that involve electrical upgrades or special permitting may lead to extra expenses and might impact eligibility for the credit, so be sure to check with either your installer or Tesla to ensure you will still qualify.
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