The Vermont Public Utility Commission just uncapped Green Mountain Power’s Tesla Powerwall lease program, making it now available to 270,000+ customers.
Green Mountain Power (GMP) is the largest electric utility in Vermont, and it launched its home battery pilot programs in 2015, becoming the first utility in the US to partner with Tesla.
Its Powerwall and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) home battery programs have long waiting lists due to their popularity – and enrollment caps. Both the Powerwall and BYOD programs have been capped at 500 customers since 2020. That’s 5 megawatts (MW) of energy storage, per program, per year.
The waitlist for the Powerwall program is now 1,200 customers long, and it’s full into 2026. About 300 more customers joined the waitlist this summer after the state suffered historic flooding.
So GMP filed a request to lift the enrollment caps on its home battery programs in April. Yesterday, the PUC agreed, citing growing customer demand for home batteries, the likelihood of more extreme weather in the future, and the benefit of the home battery programs to all GMP customers.
So that means that there’s no longer an annual limit on customers who can enroll, so people are going to get signed up and online a lot faster.
How it works
In the Powerwall program, GMP customers in Vermont lease two Tesla Powerwall batteries from GMP for $55 per month, or $5,500 in advance. In the BYOD program, customers buy their own battery from a local installer, and they can receive an incentive of up to $10,500 from GMP, depending on how much stored energy they agree to share during peaks.
Leasing battery storage from GMP makes battery storage affordable because customers share their stored energy with their utility during peak times, reducing costs and carbon emissions for all customers. Homeowners get battery backup (and more peace of mind), knowing that they can keep the electricity on (and often the water, too, for houses with wells) during outages.
Around 2,900 GMP customers currently have more than 4,800 batteries in their homes. In 2021, GMP customers saved more than $3 million, and one push in 2022 saved nearly $1.5 million. (Disclosure: I’m joining this program in September.)
The Vermont utility is also undergrounding lines and using storm-hardening line construction techniques to keep communities powered up by preventing outages before they happen.
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Today was the official start of racing at the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025! There was a tremendous energy (and heat) on the ground at NCM Motorsports Park as nearly a dozen teams took to the track. Currently, as of writing, Stanford is ranked #1 in the SOV (Single-Occupant Vehicle) class with 68 registered laps. However, the fastest lap so far belongs to UC Berkeley, which clocked a 4:45 on the 3.15-mile track. That’s an average speed of just under 40 mph on nothing but solar energy. Not bad!
In the MOV (Multi-Occupant Vehicle) class, Polytechnique Montréal is narrowly ahead of Appalachian State by just 4 laps. At last year’s formula sun race, Polytechnique Montréal took first place overall in this class, and the team hopes to repeat that success. It’s still too early for prediction though, and anything can happen between now and the final day of racing on Saturday.
Congrats to the teams that made it on track today. We look forward to seeing even more out there tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some shots from today via the event’s wonderful photographer Cora Kennedy.
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The numbers are in and they are all bad for Tesla fans – the company sold just 5,000 Cybertruck models in Q4 of 2025, and built some 30% more “other” vehicles than it delivered. It just gets worse and worse, on today’s tension-building episode of Quick Charge!
We’ve also got day 1 coverage of the 2025 Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix, reports that the Tesla Optimus program is in chaos after its chief engineer jumps ship, and a look ahead at the fresh new Hyundai IONIQ 2 set to bow early next year, thanks to some battery specs from the Kia EV2.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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Tesla has launched its new Oasis Supercharger, the long-promised EV charging station of the future, with a solar farm and off-grid batteries.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to the Supercharger stations, and CEO Elon Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
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All of these pieces have been in place for years, and Tesla has now discontinued the Powerpack in favor of the Megapack. The Supercharger network is also transitioning to V4 stations.
Yet, solar and battery deployment haven’t accelerated much in the decade since Musk made that comment, but it is finally happening.
Tesla has now unveiled the project and turned on most of the Supercharger stalls:
The project consists of 168 chargers, with half of them currently operational, making it one of the largest Supercharger stations in the world. However, that’s not even the most notable aspect of it.
The station is equipped with 11 MW of ground-mounted solar panels and canopies, spanning 30 acres of land, and 10 Tesla Megapacks with a total energy storage capacity of 39 MWh.
It can be operated off-grid, which is the case right now, according to Tesla.
With off-grid operations, Tesla was about to bring 84 stalls online just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend. The rest of the stalls and a lounge are going to open later this year.
Electrek’s Take
This is awesome. A bit late, but awesome. This is what charging stations should be like: fully powered by renewable energy.
Unfortunately, it will be much harder to open those stations in the future due to legislation that Trump and the Republican Party have just passed, which removes incentives for solar and energy storage, adds taxes on them, and removes incentives to build batteries – all things that have helped Tesla considerably over the last few years.
The US is likely going to have a few tough years for EV adoption and renewable energy deployment.
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