Tesla may be known for its electric cars, but in reality, it has its innovative fingers in a few sustainable pies. Alongside the EV business, Tesla is also a pioneer in home battery and off the grid solutions – and it’s already begun to merge those two areas into one.
South Mimms motorway services had a power cut earlier this week, and as you’d expect, the Welcome Break’s shops and facilities were dead – including the Ecotricity charging ports. However, several people – including Tesla Model X owner Waseem Mirza – realised the service station’s Tesla Superchargers were still working.
It turns out the Superchargers at South Mimms are connected to a network of Tesla Powerpacks, and that meant they had back-up energy to continue charging.
What is a Tesla Powerpack?
Tesla’s Powerwall 2 is a home battery made for consumers, but the Powerpack does pretty much the same thing – but for business and larger scale operations. And after being contacted, Tesla confirmed the South Mimms Superchargers were also installed with Powerpacks.
However, while useful in a power cut, the Powerpacks aren’t actually installed for providing backup power. Instead, they’re used to ease the demand on the grid during peak charging times, by basically providing a buffer of energy that can be used before power straight from the grid. According to Electrek, that’s why Tesla was able to increase the amount of Supercharger bays from two to 12 last year.
Tesla might be known for its electric cars, but it’s possible the company’s greatest and most important asset will be its sprawling network of Superchargers.Tesla is being hotly pursued by the likes of Nissan, Mercedes, BMW and pretty much everyone else, and while they can probably out develop Tesla in the long run – they still won’t have the bespoke, comprehensive charging network Elon Musk has created.
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