Tesla-powered homes promise to keep the lights on in outage-prone Houston— but it comes with cons, too

1 month ago 25

Vawn Himmelsbach

Tue, May 6, 2025, 4:32 AM 5 min read

A caller improvement of 11 three-story detached townhomes successful Houston holds the committedness of vigor self-sufficiency successful a metropolis wherever powerfulness tin beryllium unreliable. Each three-bedroom location is equipped with Tesla star roofs and batteries.

It’s the archetypal of its benignant successful the U.S. — and the builder is promising that “if the powerfulness ever goes retired successful Houston, for immoderate reason, they’ve got you covered,” according to KHOU 11 newsman Ron Treviño.

Texas is the lone authorities that isn’t portion of the nationalist powerfulness grid. Rather, it has its ain powerfulness grid — but that means, if thing goes wrong, it can’t gully connected powerfulness from elsewhere.

Couple this with an aging infrastructure and a propensity to beryllium deed with terrible upwind events, and this leads to predominant blackouts that past days oregon longer. In fact, Texas experienced 210 weather-related outages betwixt 2000 and 2023 — much than immoderate different state, according to Climate Central.

“Because our powerfulness grid is truthful unspeakable and we suffer powerfulness for days connected end, we person radical that person mislaid each their groceries,” Jaime Fallon, manager of income with NextGen Real Estate, told KHOU 11.

The Oaks of Shady Acres offers vigor self-sufficiency with Tesla star shingles. These star shingles enactment with Tesla’s Powerwall location artillery retention to marque the homes self-sufficient. The homes besides travel with electrical conveyance chargers.

“Residents payment from free, cleanable vigor portion besides profiting from surplus powerfulness sold backmost to the grid,” said a sponsored nonfiction astir the project.

As of precocious past month, 5 homes were inactive up for sale. Fallon claims that though the builder, Utopia Homes, is utilizing Tesla technology, the backlash against Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not hurting demand. Utopia is simply a subsidiary of Goldman Investments, which calls Tesla a spouse connected its website.

“We person honestly had nary issues with Trump and Musk backlash. In fact, I had implicit 150-plus radical astatine my brokers’ open. It was insane, radical were precise excited. Houston is an lipid and state place, truthful having the archetypal Tesla-powered homes is unheard of,” Fallon told Realtor.com. She said buyers are mostly funny successful reliable power.

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