Tesla’s energy storage business is growing significantly, but its solar business continues coasting.
On Wednesday the company released its first-quarter earnings report, highlighting 360% year-over-year quarterly growth in its energy storage business. Tesla booked a strong 3.89 GWh of energy storage, compared to 846 MWh deployed a year ago. The first quarter record surpassed the prior record of 2.46 GWh from Q4 2022 by 58%.
Over the past twelve months, Tesla has booked 9.6 GWh of energy storage capacity.
The increase in energy storage deployment is a result of the company’s continuous efforts to boost production capacity at the Megafactory in Lathrop, California, aiming for an annual output of 40 GWh of Megapacks. Currently each Megapack provides 3.9 MWh of energy storage capacity.
Tesla recently announced a second 40 GWh Megafactory in Shanghai. The Chinese facility will come online in 2024. The company also manufactures about 3 GWh of Megapacks in Nevada.
Tesla also set a record in “energy generation and storage” revenue, reaching just over $1.5 billion. This value is up 148% from $616 million in Q1 2022 and up 17% from the $1.3 billion in Q4 2022.
The energy group has been profitable for the last two quarters, following three quarters of losses.
Image: Tesla
When asked by an investor if Tesla Energy would be bigger than the company’s automotive business (which Elon Musk has cited multiple times), Musk replied, “bigger than Auto from a standpoint of like total gigawatt hours deployed, so it’s possible automotive revenue may be higher.”
In Tesla’s recently published third Master Plan, the company estimated that 112 TWh of batteries would be needed for the world’s vehicle fleet, with 46.2 TWh of “e chem” (Megapack style) batteries required to green and electrify the power grid.
Tesla’s Solar Roof was not mentioned in the call nor in the quarterly documents. This comes after analysts suggested that Tesla had only installed 3,200 Solar Roofs nationwide, and Tesla responded via Twitter that this value was “incorrect by a large margin.”
Tesla executives did not touch on the solar business during the Q1 2023 earnings call.
Tesla reported 67 MW of solar deployments in the latest quarter, growing 40% compared to Q1 2022. However, this number is somewhat disappointing, as the prior three quarters averaged 100 MW deployed.
Over the past twelve months, Tesla has booked 367 MW of solar power.
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