Tesla and Sunrun dispatch 580 MW to California's grid

Tesla and Sunrun announced that their fleets of residential batteries supplied more than 580 megawatts of peak power to California's electrical grid on the evening of September 9, 2026. The coordinated release marks the largest distributed power plant dispatch on record, generating enough capacity to cover all households in Sacramento County during peak hours.

The three-hour discharge was requested by the California Energy Commission and local utilities during severe heat, surging electricity demand, and rising wholesale energy prices. Tesla Powerwalls provided 517 megawatts across 110,000 units, of which Sunrun owns and operates 55%. Sunrun also contributed 63 megawatts from more than 30,000 batteries made by other manufacturers, bringing the total to over 140,000 participating residential batteries.

The operation was run under two state programs: the Demand Side Grid Support program, triggered when day-ahead power prices topped $200 per megawatt-hour, and the Emergency Load Reduction Program called by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. On the following evening of September 10, Southern California Edison requested a separate three-hour dispatch, where Tesla and Sunrun delivered more than 140 megawatts. Combined, the fleets could have reached over 720 megawatts in a single dispatch.

A study by The Brattle Group, commissioned by the two companies, estimated that such distributed programs could yield up to $206 million in net savings for Californians by 2028. Along with Renew Home, Tesla and Sunrun are pursuing an initiative to unlock more than 16.8 gigawatts of flexible capacity from batteries, solar, smart thermostats, and electric vehicles, including a project enrolling nearly 21,000 devices backed by Google and PG&E scheduled for this fall.