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Tesla has signed what could be described as a breakthrough deal to deploy solar roofs and Powerwalls on a “large scale” in a new community being built by Brookfield Asset Management and Dacra in Austin.

With the launch of the Tesla Solar Roof Tiles, the company has not only been trying to address the market of existing houses in need of a new roof, but it also wanted to expand to the new home market.

Developments on that front have been slow, but Tesla has appeared to be making breakthroughs recently.

Last month, Tesla reached a deal with real estate developer and new home builder Alset EHome announced an agreement with Tesla to supply solar panels, Powerwall, and electric vehicle chargers for 20 new homes being built in Porter, Texas.

Now, Tesla Energy, the automaker’s energy division, has reached an even greater deal with Brookfield and Dacra, two large real estate companies, to develop a new “large-scale” community with Tesla solar roofs and Powerwalls in all new homes:

“Tesla Energy, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (“Brookfield” or “BAM”) (NYSE: BAM; TSX: BAM.A) and Dacra today announced a new initiative, provisionally named SunHouse at Easton Park, the first Tesla Solar neighborhood and the nation’s most sustainable residential community. Combining the real estate expertise of Brookfield and Dacra with Tesla Energy’s innovative products and knowledge, the state-of-the-art sustainable features will be installed in phases to allow for ongoing learning and innovation.”

While the companies didn’t release the number of targeted new homes, the project appears to be a significant development for Tesla Energy entering the new home market.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk even commented on the announcement:

“Neighborhood solar installations across all housing types will reshape how people live. Brookfield and Dacra’s commitment to stay at the vanguard of that evolution is what makes them the right collaborator for Tesla Energy. The feedback we get from the solar and battery products used in this community will impact how we develop and launch new products.” 

The community is located in Austin, Texas, near the local international airport:

They confirmed that the first phase of installations already started last month, and they are starting with Tesla Solar Roof tiles V3 and Powerwall 2 home battery packs.

Electric vehicle charging stations and “additional transportation, technology and energy solutions.”

Brian Kingston, CEO of Brookfield’s Real Estate business, commented on the project:

“This initiative brings together multiple parts of our organization with innovative and forward-thinking partners that share a commitment to advance the development of sustainable communities. As consumers increasingly seek out energy security alongside sustainable places to live, combining Tesla’s solar technology together with Brookfield’s real estate and renewables development capabilities will help us meet demand for environmentally responsible communities of the future.”

Tesla recently ran into some issues in the deployment of its solar roof tiles, which ended up receiving an important price increase.

But the automaker still has hopes to accelerate the deployment to 1,000 new roofs per week by the end of the year.

New home projects like this one and the one signed last month could help greatly toward that goal since the installation process is easier and more easily scalable on new homes than on existing homes that need a new roof.


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Meghan reveals who said ‘I love you’ first with Harry – and what she misses about the UK

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Meghan reveals who said 'I love you' first with Harry - and what she misses about the UK

The second season of the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle show With Love, Meghan, has been released. 

Over the eight-episode series, which features celebrity guests including US model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen and Queer Eye’s Tan France, Meghan opens up about what she misses most about the UK, the meal she cooked on the night Prince Harry proposed, and who said “I love you” first.

Despite Harry not making a cameo in the Netflix show, Meghan does give some insight into her life in California with the prince, and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.

In one episode, she says it was Harry who first said he loved her, and that she fell in love with him while camping in Botswana, on the pair’s third date.

Harry and Meghan on the day they announced their engagement. Pic: PA
Image:
Harry and Meghan on the day they announced their engagement. Pic: PA

“We met in Bostwana and we camped for five days together,” she says, adding: “You really get to know someone when you are in a little tent.”

Later, Meghan reveals she tried to make a roast chicken on the night Harry proposed in 2017, but it didn’t turn out how she expected.

“I will say when I made a roast chicken for my now-husband I was still having a lot of challenges with the conversion of celsius and fahrenheit. I made a horrible chicken that night. I mean, truly terrible,” she says.

After first getting married, Meghan had planned to apply for British citizenship. But the pair later moved to the US after stepping down from their roles as working royals.

Meghan told Tan France she misses listening to Magic FM. Pic: Netflix/PA
Image:
Meghan told Tan France she misses listening to Magic FM. Pic: Netflix/PA

In episode three, with British fashion designer Tan France, Meghan admits one of the things she “misses the most” about the UK, after leaving five years ago.

She says: “Honestly, one of the things I miss the most about the UK is the radio station called Magic.”

To which France quips: “Magic FM. Wow! Now, sorry to say this to you publicly, but that’s such a grandma station.”

A laughing Meghan replies: “I’ll be that grandma.”

During a moment where the pair are crafting aprons for their children, Meghan says she “always wanted to be a mum”, which is now “better than she expected” after the birth of Archie, in 2019, and Lilibet – who they call Lili for short – in 2021.

Meghan and Chrissy Teigen. Pic: Netflix/PA
Image:
Meghan and Chrissy Teigen. Pic: Netflix/PA

Sympathising with France, who explained he gets heartbroken if away from his two young children for more than a couple of days, the duchess says the longest she and Harry have ever been without seeing their children is almost three weeks.

“I was… not well,” Meghan says about the separation.

In Harry’s 2023 memoir, Spare, he wrote of the “difficult days” after Queen Elizabeth’s death and how he and Meghan were separated from Archie and Lili for “longer than we’d ever been”.

He said when they reunited at their home in Montecito, “for days and days we couldn’t stop hugging the children, couldn’t let them out of our sight”.

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The premiere of the second season of With Love, Meghan comes two weeks after Harry and Meghan announced a watered-down deal with the streaming giant Netflix.

They have signed a “multi-year, first-look deal for film and television projects”, in contrast to their reported $100m (£74m) contract five years ago.

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Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

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Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.

The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.

The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.

He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.

He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.

Pic: AP
Image:
Pic: AP

During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”

A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.

The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.

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NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.

In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”

“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.

In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.

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Bands pull out from festival after group ‘cut off’ over Palestine flag

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Bands pull out from festival after group 'cut off' over Palestine flag

Several bands have pulled out from the Victorious music festival just hours before their scheduled performances, following claims by Irish folk group The Mary Wallopers that they were “cut off” for displaying a Palestinian flag.

The Last Dinner Party, Cliffords, and The Academic announced on Saturday that they would no longer be performing at the annual music festival in Portsmouth following Friday’s incident.

The organisers, who said the band’s set was cut short for using a “discriminatory” chant, have since apologised and promised to make “a substantial donation to humanitarian relief efforts for the Palestinian people”.

Rock band The Last Dinner Party said they are “outraged” by the incident and would boycott the festival.

“We are outraged by the decision made to silence The Mary Wallopers yesterday at Victorious. As a band we cannot cosign political censorship and will therefore be boycotting the festival today,” they said in a statement shared on their Instagram page.

“As Gazans are deliberately plunged into catastrophic famine after two years of escalating violence, it is urgent and obvious that artists use their platform to draw attention to the cause.

“To see an attempt to direct attention away from the genocide in order to maintain an apolitical image is immensely disappointing.”

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Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland and Aurora Nishevci of The Last Dinner Party. File pic: Reuters
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Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland and Aurora Nishevci of The Last Dinner Party. File pic: Reuters

The Last Dinner Party said that throughout the summer, they have used their performances to encourage their audiences to make donations to a medical charity supporting Palestinians and urged their fans “more than ever to do the same”.

The band said they are “devastated to be put in this position” and apologised to those who were hoping to see them perform.

Following The Mary Wallopers’ set, a spokesperson for Victorious said: “We spoke to the artist before the performance regarding the festival’s long-standing policy of not allowing flags of any kind at the event, but that we respect their right to express their views during the show.

“Although a flag was displayed on stage contrary to our policy, and this was raised with the artist’s crew, the show was not ended at this point, and it was the artist’s decision to stop the song.”

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The Mary Wallopers claimed the festival had released a “misleading statement to the press claiming they cut our sound because of a discriminatory chant, and not the band’s call to Free Palestine”.

The band said their video “clearly shows a Victorious crew member coming on stage, interfering with our show, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of ‘Free Palestine'”.

“The same crew member is later heard in the video saying ‘you aren’t playing until the flag is removed’,” the band added.

Rock band The Academic have also pulled out of the festival, saying they could not “in good conscience” perform at “a festival that silences free speech”, while Irish band Cliffords said they “refuse to play if we are to be censored for showing our support to the people of Palestine”.

After the bands’ announcements that they were pulling out of the festival, the organisers released another statement, saying that they did not handle “the explanation of our policies sensitively or far enough in advance to allow a sensible conclusion to be reached”, and issued an apology.

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