* Tesla joins western European power trading exchange
* Surveys German customers on potential energy services
* Brandenburg plant chosen with energy push in mind - source
By Vera Eckert, Christoph Steitz, Tom Käckenhoff and Edward
Taylor
FRANKFURT, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Elon Musk appears to be
opening a new front in the European battle for electric car
supremacy: the power behind the wheel.
Musk's Tesla has recently acquired a licence that
will enable the carmaker to trade electricity across western
Europe and the company has also been surveying customers in
Germany about potentially using Tesla electricity in their cars.
Such moves, consultants and energy industry executives say,
could set the stage for the company - possibly with one or more
partners - to take on established utilities in Germany, Europe’s
biggest power market and autos heartland.
Tesla declined to comment about its energy market plans.
Generating and trading power could help Tesla lower the
running costs of its cars at a time rival automakers, including
Germany's BMW, Audi, Porsche and
Mercedes, are churning out new electric models.
It could also step up competition to utilities such as
Vattenfall and EnBW, which are investing in
electric mobility services too, but which like peers RWE
and E.ON are lumbered with the cost of
winding down fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
Tesla already sells solar panels and the Powerwall battery
storage system for homes, but now appears to be looking at
selling electricity directly to customers and using the home
storage systems to provide services to the grid.
In June, the company became a member of the Paris-based EPEX
Spot power exchange, a platform used to trade much of western
Europe's intraday cross-border electricity.
A month later, it surveyed German customers about their
interest in energy services.
"What would encourage you to switch from your existing
energy supplier?", the survey said, according to a copy seen by
Reuters.
"Would you buy a Tesla photovoltaic system and home storage
(Tesla Powerwall) if you could switch to a specially designed
Tesla electricity tariff?", it added.
Tesla also asked potential energy customers whether they
would allow the company to control when cars would charge.
This could allow it to coincide charging with cheap
electricity rates during off peak hours, consultants and
industry executives said.
It could also open the way for Tesla to use power stored by
customers to help balance the electricity grid, an increasingly
important service in Germany as it becomes ever more dependent
on volatile wind and solar power.
Companies offering similar services in Germany include
Shell-owned sonnen, virtual power plant operator Next
Kraftwerke, and power aggregator Lichtblick.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Tesla's interest in renewable energy was one of the factors
that led it to choose Brandenburg state around Berlin as the
site for a new factory, a person familiar with the company's
deliberations told Reuters.
In the first half of this year, some 65% of the electricity
on the Brandenburg grid was generated from renewable sources,
mostly wind. But like other areas in the north of the country,
it often wastes energy because Germany's networks are limited in
how much green power they can transport over long distances.
Tesla's Gigafactory 4 in Brandenburg will on its own require
100 megawatts (MW) of power and up to 400 MW if battery cell
production is also launched, according to transmission grid
operator 50Hertz.
Tesla is a long way from building up enough battery assets
to deliver frequency regulation at grid scale, say specialists
such as utility Axpo. But the company has made several steps to
expand its energy activities in recent months.
In May, it applied for a UK licence to supply power,
according to the Telegraph newspaper. It also uses a platform to
bring users of its solar and Powerwall battery system into the
electricity market in Australia.
"The next and obvious step for Tesla is to get into
production, especially of renewable power," said consultant
Berthold Hannes, who has 30 years of energy advisory experience.
"Tesla could use its own locations, for example the roofs of
plants or the sites of charging points, and alternatively, or in
addition, it could take stakes in solar plants or wind parks,"
he said.
Germany pioneered the solar power market, and is in the
process of laying a policy framework that will make it easier
for decentralised power generation and supply.
"Tesla's long-term plan definitely includes tackling the
energy industry in a bigger way, though it's questionable
whether it invests enough at the moment in that area," said a
former member of Tesla management, who declined to be named.
Thomas Deser, a portfolio manager at Union Investment, said
it was unlikely Tesla would enter the German electricity
distribution business on its own - "but it could do so with a
competent partner from the energy industry."
(Reporting by Vera Eckert, Christoph Steitz, Tom Kaeckenhoff
and Edward Taylor
Writing by Edward Taylor
Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Mark Potter)
