WAIT, WHAT?!
Tesla Wins License to Supply Electricity Across the UK
- Tesla Energy Ventures received an electricity supply licence from Ofgem after a seven-month regulatory review, allowing it to sell power across England, Scotland, and Wales.
- The company is expected to launch a service similar to its Texas-based Tesla Electric, integrating EV charging, home batteries, and solar generation.
- Despite Tesla’s existing base of EV and Powerwall customers in the UK, analysts say the highly regulated and low-margin retail energy market will be difficult to penetrate.
Tesla has been granted approval to supply electricity to homes and businesses across the UK, opening the door for the electric vehicle giant to enter the country’s retail energy market.
Energy regulator Ofgem confirmed on Thursday that Tesla Energy Ventures Limited, a subsidiary of Musk’s company, has been granted an electricity supply licence by the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority under the Electricity Act 1989.
The licence allows the company to supply electricity to both domestic and non-domestic customers in England, Scotland and Wales.
Ofgem said the approval followed a seven-month application and assessment process that ran from July 2025 to March 2026.
The licence formally took effect on Wednesday evening, after Tesla was informed of the decision and the instrument was entered into Ofgem’s electronic public register.
As a licensed supplier, Tesla Energy Ventures has to comply with the sector’s standard licence conditions.
These include requirements covering consumer protection, fair treatment of customers, financial responsibility, billing transparency and operational capability.
Ofgem said it will monitor the company’s compliance and can use enforcement powers under the electricity act if necessary, including issuing direction or fines.
- Tesla Energy Ventures received an electricity supply licence from Ofgem after a seven-month regulatory review, allowing it to sell power across England, Scotland, and Wales.
- The company is expected to launch a service similar to its Texas-based Tesla Electric, integrating EV charging, home batteries, and solar generation.
- Despite Tesla’s existing base of EV and Powerwall customers in the UK, analysts say the highly regulated and low-margin retail energy market will be difficult to penetrate.
Tesla has been granted approval to supply electricity to homes and businesses across the UK, opening the door for the electric vehicle giant to enter the country’s retail energy market.
Energy regulator Ofgem confirmed on Thursday that Tesla Energy Ventures Limited, a subsidiary of Musk’s company, has been granted an electricity supply licence by the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority under the Electricity Act 1989.
The licence allows the company to supply electricity to both domestic and non-domestic customers in England, Scotland and Wales.
Ofgem said the approval followed a seven-month application and assessment process that ran from July 2025 to March 2026.
The licence formally took effect on Wednesday evening, after Tesla was informed of the decision and the instrument was entered into Ofgem’s electronic public register.
As a licensed supplier, Tesla Energy Ventures has to comply with the sector’s standard licence conditions.
These include requirements covering consumer protection, fair treatment of customers, financial responsibility, billing transparency and operational capability.
Ofgem said it will monitor the company’s compliance and can use enforcement powers under the electricity act if necessary, including issuing direction or fines.
Tesla eyes UK household energy
The approval clears a key regulatory hurdle for Tesla as Musk pushes to expand the company’s energy business alongside its EVs.
Tesla Energy Ventures, the company’s Manchester-based energy subsidiary, first applied for the licence last summer.
The application was signed by Andrew Payne, who leads Tesla’s energy business in Europe.
The business is expected to launch an electricity supply service in Britain similar to Tesla Electric, the power offering Musk’s company introduced in Texas in 2022.
This service allows customers to power homes, charge electric vehicles and sell surplus solar energy back to the grid using Tesla’s energy.
Tesla already sells home batteries known as powerwalls, solar technology and electric vehicle chargers in the UK, meaning it already has a base of customers using its energy products.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown at the time, had said: “Although its EV sales have dipped sharply this year, Tesla still boasts significant car ownership in the UK and has sold thousands of home storage batteries here,” she said.
“This could mean Tesla Electric has access to a willing customer base, especially if it follows the model of its business in Texas which allows owners of its EVs to charge their cars cheaply and pays them for feeding surplus electricity back to the grid.”
Adam Bell, former head of energy at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and now director of policy at consultancy Stonehaven, said the sector remains heavily regulated and competitive.
“Tesla is entering a heavily regulated market in which margins have been squeezed to the narrowest possible extent and in which it faces competitors who have already invested in novel tariff offers,” he said.
“Even with access to an ecosystem of Tesla EV and Powerwall owners, it will find making headway challenging.”
The company has only applied for an electricity licence rather than a dual-fuel licence, meaning it will not initially supply gas alongside electricity, which is a common bundle offered by many UK suppliers.
Tesla already has a foothold in Britain’s energy system. In 2020, a separate company, Tesla Motors Limited, was granted a licence to generate electricity in Great Britain, although that licence was not part of the regulator’s assessment of the supply application.
By CityAM
The approval clears a key regulatory hurdle for Tesla as Musk pushes to expand the company’s energy business alongside its EVs.
Tesla Energy Ventures, the company’s Manchester-based energy subsidiary, first applied for the licence last summer.
The application was signed by Andrew Payne, who leads Tesla’s energy business in Europe.
The business is expected to launch an electricity supply service in Britain similar to Tesla Electric, the power offering Musk’s company introduced in Texas in 2022.
This service allows customers to power homes, charge electric vehicles and sell surplus solar energy back to the grid using Tesla’s energy.
Tesla already sells home batteries known as powerwalls, solar technology and electric vehicle chargers in the UK, meaning it already has a base of customers using its energy products.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown at the time, had said: “Although its EV sales have dipped sharply this year, Tesla still boasts significant car ownership in the UK and has sold thousands of home storage batteries here,” she said.
“This could mean Tesla Electric has access to a willing customer base, especially if it follows the model of its business in Texas which allows owners of its EVs to charge their cars cheaply and pays them for feeding surplus electricity back to the grid.”
Adam Bell, former head of energy at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and now director of policy at consultancy Stonehaven, said the sector remains heavily regulated and competitive.
“Tesla is entering a heavily regulated market in which margins have been squeezed to the narrowest possible extent and in which it faces competitors who have already invested in novel tariff offers,” he said.
“Even with access to an ecosystem of Tesla EV and Powerwall owners, it will find making headway challenging.”
The company has only applied for an electricity licence rather than a dual-fuel licence, meaning it will not initially supply gas alongside electricity, which is a common bundle offered by many UK suppliers.
Tesla already has a foothold in Britain’s energy system. In 2020, a separate company, Tesla Motors Limited, was granted a licence to generate electricity in Great Britain, although that licence was not part of the regulator’s assessment of the supply application.
By CityAM
Big Tech's Push to Make Electricity Cheaper
- Google, Tesla, and other firms have launched Utilize to promote more efficient use of the U.S. power grid.
- The coalition argues that better grid utilization could lower consumer electricity costs and ease pressure from AI-driven data center demand.
- Critics say efficiency alone is not enough and warn Big Tech must still help pay for broader grid expansion and infrastructure upgrades.
A new coalition of tech firms, including Google and Tesla, is banding together to address the growing issue of energy affordability in the United States. The AI boom is pushing energy grids around the country to the max, and skyrocketing energy demand from the data centers that power large language models is causing energy prices to soar. Until now, consumers have had to pay the price for Big Tech’s AI ambitions, but the coalition – called Utilize – is pledging to lower energy prices across the board by optimizing grid utilization.
"We recognize that there's a need to prioritize affordability and do so in a way that really empowers states to make the best decisions," Ian Magruder, Utilize's executive director, was quoted in an Axios report this week.
The coalition boldly claims that by utilizing the grid more efficiently, consumers in the United States can save over $100 billion over the next decade. The group argues that the grid is designed to accommodate peak-demand hours that occur just a handful of times per year, and that the rest of the time, all of that capacity is sitting unused, and therefore wasted. In fact, a study from Stanford University found that transmission lines in the U.S. were using just 52% of their transmission capacity even at peak hours. Most of the time, they were running at around 30% capacity. This results in consumers paying more per kilowatt-hour than is strictly necessary.
“Battery storage and distributed energy resources are already demonstrating how smarter use of the grid can improve affordability,” says Colby Hastings, Senior Director of Residential Energy at Tesla.
Improving grid utilization would be beneficial for Big Tech in multiple ways. It would ease the pressure of finding sufficient new energy sources to allow the energy-hungry AI sector to continue its rapid buildout and lessen the need for expensive and slow grid expansions. “Unlocking idle grid capacity would let companies like Google connect new loads faster without waiting years for new transmission lines and generation to be built,” reports Electrek.
It would also be beneficial for consumers. “We’ve spent decades building grid infrastructure for peak demand that occurs a handful of hours per year, and consumers pay for all of it year-round,” the Electrek report goes on to say. “If distributed resources like battery storage and virtual power plants can shave those peaks and fill those valleys, the math on electricity costs changes significantly.”
As constituents and policymakers become increasingly discontented with AI’s impact on rising energy prices, calls for Big Tech to provide the funding for grid expansion have been growing louder. While Donald Trump has been encouraging Big Tech to supply its own energy, critics argue that this will result in the development of a ‘shadow grid’ where oversight is slim to none. Trump “essentially envisions a bespoke new power system built in parallel to the existing one,” argues a recent op-ed from the energy editor of non-partisan news outlet Semafor.
Experts argue that the cost of expanding the grid is, in fact, the real issue here. Focusing on energy supply, rather than grid investment, may be allowing Big Tech to once again shirk the full cost of its operations. “Most of today’s cost pressure is coming from transmission, distribution, and system readiness, not energy supply,” Brandon Owens, a grid expert and founder of advisory platform AIxEnergy, was quoted by Politico last week. “Those costs remain even if a data center self-supplies generation.”
The goals of Utilize, too, could water down or disguise the urgency of expanding and updating the nation’s stressed grids. While increasing the efficiency of grid use is a worthwhile goal, it should not come at the expense of ensuring that Big Tech contributes its fair share to national energy production and infrastructure.
That being said, Utilize could substantially benefit the U.S. energy sector and consumers by rallying influential figures around an important and solvable issue. “This is one of the more interesting energy coalitions we’ve seen launch in a while,” writes Electrek. “The reason is simple: it aligns the economic interests of very different companies around a problem that’s genuinely fixable.”
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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