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- Tesla applied with a Texas agency to sell electricity on the retail market in the state.
- It would do so through a new subsidiary, Tesla Energy Ventures.
- CEO Elon Musk and his companies have grown their presence in Texas in recent months.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Elon Musk just moved to Texas. Now, he wants to sell electricity to people in the Lone Star State.
As Texas Monthly reported Thursday, Tesla Tesla applied earlier this month with the Public Utility Commission of Texas earlier in August to sell power on the retail market through a new subsidiary dubbed Tesla Energy Ventures.
The magazine reports that Tesla could sell energy directly to the state's deregulated electricity grid, which is called ERCOT. Texas is the only state with its own power grid that doesn't share energy with neighboring states.
The move could let Texans whose homes are outfitted with solar panels share power with the state's electrical grid. And as the outlet noted, that could even allow those homes to operate as their own power plant, connected via the state's grid.
According to the filing, Tesla could leverage its network of solar panel customers in the state to build a userbase, marketing to them through the mobile app and the website. Federal energy data shows that Texans have installed more than 1 gigawatt of personal solar panels to date, per the report.
The commission will decide on the application's approval or disapproval in November.
The new initiative would follow Tesla's already-reported move to build two giant mega-batteries in Texas: one near Austin close to the Gigafactory site that's still under construction and another near Houston, as Bloomberg reported in March.
Texas is still reeling from a brutal wave of power outages caused by a bout of inclement winter weather in February. More than 100 people died, and millions of Texans were left without power for days in the bitter cold.
Since then, some electricity suppliers have left the market, and thirteen new ones have applied with the PUC to sell power in Texas, the commission told Texas Monthly.
As for Musk, he said last year that he's moving to Texas, and both his Boring Company and Tesla have a large presence there.