Energy
Tesla is offering Solar customers an incentive in latest referral program update
Tesla is now offering a $250 award to new solar customers who purchase or subscribe to a solar panel system through the company’s referral program. The $250 incentive will also apply to anyone who refers a buyer through a referral link.
“Our goal is to build the best clean energy products and help Tesla owners share their excitement and experiences with others,” Tesla says in its updated referral program page.
For referring customers and their referrals to receive the $250 award, they must place their orders via Design Studio using the referrer’s unique referral link. The award is only applicable to orders placed on or after Oct. 1, 2019.
The referral cannot be credited after the order has been placed or at the time of product delivery. Customers will receive their awards after the solar panel system has been installed and activated.
Tesla’s referral program for solar only includes purchases and subscriptions of its solar panels. At the moment, it does not cover purchases of the Powerwall, Powerpack, or the new Solarglass.
- Tesla offers $250 incentive for Solar panel installations (Credit: Teslarati)
Tesla Solar: Should you buy or subscribe?
Tesla offers a range of options for solar panel customers, depending on the needs and budget of the homeowner.
Buying a solar panel system allows you to choose from a range of four sizes. A small system is most suitable for 1,000 to 2,000-square-foot homes with an average electric bill of $90 to $110 per month. It can generate up to around 14 to 19 kWh per day.
On the other end of the spectrum, a large solar panel system produces an average of 58 to 77 kWh per day. It is best suited for large homes around 4,000 square feet. The price range for buying a solar panel system starts at $7,770 for the small system to $27,750 for the extra-large. This includes installation costs and federal tax incentives.

Homeowners can also opt for subscription solar, which makes it cheaper and easier to make the switch to sustainable energy. Tesla’s one-click subscription program is currently available in six states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico.
Small solar panel systems in all states except for California are available for $50 per month, medium for $100 per month, and large for $150 per month. California users are charged higher fees of $65, $130, and $195 for small, medium, and large systems respectively. All subscription rates also include installation costs.
Canceling a subscription does not come with a cancellation fee, although Tesla charges a removal fee to cover the cost of removing the panels.
Tesla ramps up Solarglass production
The renewed focus on its solar product follows news of Tesla firing up its production of Solarglass, which Musk unveiled in October last year. The company’s new flagship solar product boasts increased power density, easy installation, better durability, and a lower cost per watt compared to conventional solar panels.
Yes, you can walk on the Tesla Solarglass roof. In stilettos, if you want 😉 https://t.co/6wwKJqmPdr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2019
Musk previously announced that Tesla is “spooling up its production line rapidly” in hopes of building 1,000 solar roofs per week by the end of 2019.
The company has yet to make a report of its production numbers in its upcoming Q4 2019 earnings call set for Jan. 29. However, according to its third-quarter report, Tesla managed to deploy 43 MW of solar products, down from 93 MW during the same quarter of the previous year, but 43 percent higher than the number of installations in the quarter prior.
News of Tesla ramping up its solar panel production sparked in April last year, as Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, NY began hiring for at least three dozen job openings. In August of the same year, Tesla obtained a building permit to build a new testing facility for its solar panels in Fremont, CA.
Energy
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can power your home with Powerwall 3 during outages.
Tesla has turned its two top sellers into backup batteries for the house.
Tesla Energy announced on Tuesday that Powershare Home Backup is now available for new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles paired with a Powerwall 3, saying the car can “extend your home backup by over 2 days.” Minutes later, Tesla’s main account quoted the post with a broader pitch: “With Powerwall 3, every Tesla can now serve as your home’s backup battery.”
Until this week, the Cybertruck was the only Tesla that could send power back into a home, and that capability only began working alongside Powerwall 3 last month, after years of ambitious targets.
Tesla’s updated Powershare page says every Model 3 and Model Y ordered in the U.S. or Puerto Rico on or after October 1, 2026 can use the feature. Some, but not all, earlier cars also qualify. Owners can check on the touchscreen under Software, then Additional Vehicle Information, where a capable car shows “Powershare Support: Enabled.” As Electrek reported, bidirectional power on the two cars runs through an inverter Tesla calls PCS2 Lite, and the company has not said when that part entered production on each trim.
The home side is simpler. A house that already has a Powerwall 3 and either a Wall Connector 3 or Universal Wall Connector needs no additional equipment, and Tesla says compatibility is enabled through a software update. When the grid drops, the Powerwall and the car work together, with up to 11.52 kW of continuous power available. Tesla’s “over two days” estimate assumes a home using 30 kWh per day and a car starting at a 90 percent charge. Standard trims are rated for up to two days, while the Cybertruck adds more than three.
There are limits. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ support is listed as “coming soon.” Model S and Model X are not included, and Grid Support, the program that lets Cybertruck owners in Texas send power back to the grid during demand spikes for bill credits, is not available for Model 3 or Model Y.
The rollout also lines up with something Elon Musk said more than three years ago. At Tesla’s March 2023 Investor Day, Musk said, “I don’t think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall.” Tesla has now shipped the feature for its volume cars with exactly that requirement attached.
The Powerwall pairing was the hard part on Cybertruck. Tesla told owners in December 2025 that Powershare with Powerwall had been pushed to mid 2026, and lead engineer Wes Morrill explained that two devices capable of forming a home’s grid have to negotiate which one leads during an outage, across multiple generations of hardware. With that work done for the truck, Tesla was able to extend it to the Model 3 and Model Y within a month.
Ford and GM have offered home backup from their EVs for several years, but both require a separate inverter and backup hardware. Tesla’s version leans on equipment many Powerwall 3 owners already have on the wall. Powershare for the two cars also ships as part of software update 2026.38.3, the same release that began delivering Halloween Mode on Tuesday.
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.
SpaceX and Google mull massive partnership on Musk’s orbital data dream: report
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.


