Tesla offers discounted home batteries in New England VPP push

Tesla is offering cheaper home battery leases to homeowners in Massachusetts and Connecticut, as long as they let the company tap into those batteries to help the power grid. Under the deal, you get a Tesla Powerwall with no money down, paying about $30 a month less than a standard lease in Massachusetts, or about $60 a month less in Connecticut. In exchange, Tesla can control the battery and use it during 70 to 100 grid events a year, mostly times when electricity demand is high and utilities want to avoid firing up expensive backup power plants. Tesla says it still keeps enough charge in your battery to serve its usual job: backing up your home during an outage and helping lower your bill.

These states already run a program called ConnectedSolutions, which pays battery owners for sending power back to the grid at peak times. Tesla has used that program for nearly a decade and says its stability, including Connecticut's recently expanded payments through a program called Energy Storage Solutions, is what let the company offer bigger discounts there. This approach is similar to what Tesla already does in Texas, where competition among electricity retailers has led to cheap or free battery deals funded by the money companies make managing those batteries.

For homeowners weighing whether battery storage is worth the cost, discounts like these lower the upfront barrier, though the tradeoff is giving up some control over when and how the battery is used. Other companies, including Sunrun, Generac and Enphase, run similar virtual power plant programs elsewhere, so it's worth checking what your own state and utility offer.