By Jason Plautz
A planned Austin neighborhood is touting itself as “the nation’s most sustainable residential community,” with homes outfitted with solar panels and battery storage from Tesla.
The SunHouse at Easton Park development is the result of a partnership between Tesla, Brookfield Asset Management and real estate developer Dacra. Installations at the homes began in June with sample homes that will help guide the rest of the planned development. Homes will also have electric vehicle chargers and other smart features and the community will be outfitted with coordinated transportation and technology solutions, according to a Brookfield press release.
The project also offers Tesla a unique large-scale test bed for its energy products, which have had trouble breaking through in the market because of installation challenges and high prices. Although Tesla CEO Elon Musk has pledged to make his company a market leader in solar with ambitions to build “virtual power plants” that connect homes powered by Tesla solar roofs, he admitted this spring to “significant mistakes” with the company’s solar arm.
In a July 9 statement, Musk said “the feedback we get from the solar and battery products used in this community will impact how we develop and launch new products.” Tesla, which disbanded its public relations department in 2020, did not respond to requests for more information about what it hopes to learn from the project.
One of the errors Musk had cited was not recognizing the complexity of some existing roofs and the difficulty engineers would face in retrofitting them with Tesla solar tiles. Building the SunHouse homes from the ground up, however, can sidestep that issue and show the full potential of the solar and storage package, said Adam Walters, former legal counsel for Tesla.
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