Morgan Stanley: SpaceX and Tesla deepen physical AI ties

RWE has taken a final investment decision to build a 400MW/1.1GW-hour battery storage system at its Moerdijk power station in Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. Construction is expected to begin shortly, with commissioning scheduled for the second quarter of 2028. The installation, comprising 208 lithium-ion battery containers, is designed to supply grid support equivalent to the evening peak demand of around 500,000 households for up to three hours, and will connect to the Dutch national electricity grid using existing infrastructure at the Moerdijk site. Under an agreement with transmission system operator TenneT, the battery will manage electricity flows and could free additional grid capacity for users currently on waiting lists, with TenneT and regional grid operator Enexis set to assess the project's impact in a broader congestion management review planned for December 2026. The site already hosts a smaller synthetic inertia battery of 7.5MW/11MW-hours connected to the continental European grid, and the project is linked to the 795MW OranjeWind offshore wind development, a joint initiative by RWE and TotalEnergies. RWE Generation SE CEO Nikolaus Valerius called the battery a major milestone for reliable power supply and grid relief in Noord-Brabant, noting it can absorb surplus electricity within seconds. RWE currently operates two battery storage systems in the Netherlands, including a 35MW/41MWh installation at Eemshaven, and globally runs battery systems totalling approximately 1.7GW with 3GW under construction.

Sunrun and Tesla dispatched more than 580 megawatts of peak power from home batteries to California's grid on the evening of September 9, 2026, the largest distributed power plant dispatch event on record. The event drew on more than 140,000 home batteries and combined 517 megawatts from Tesla Powerwalls with 63 megawatts from additional batteries, with 110,000 Powerwalls participating and more than half of those, 55%, owned and operated by Sunrun, which also dispatched more than 30,000 of its customers' batteries from other manufacturers. The dispatch was requested by the California Energy Commission and utilities and ran for a three-hour evening period to increase the grid's operating margin and put downward pressure on real-time energy prices, coordinated through the California Energy Commission's Demand Side Grid Support program and the California Public Utilities Commission's Emergency Load Reduction Program. The DSGS dispatch was triggered by the California Independent System Operator's day-ahead locational marginal price exceeding $200 per megawatt-hour, while the ELRP dispatch was called by Pacific Gas and Electric Company for batteries in its territory. The following evening, September 10, Southern California Edison requested a three-hour peak dispatch and Sunrun and Tesla delivered more than 140 megawatts; had both events occurred on the same night, the companies could have delivered over 720 megawatts in a single dispatch. A report by The Brattle Group, commissioned by Sunrun and Tesla, found such programs could provide up to $206 million in net cost savings to Californians by 2028.