As well as Elon Musk remarking that the company may have had its “best ever quarter” for solar since the SolarCity takeover, Tesla’s energy storage deployments have enjoyed a ramp up, while a fellow exec hinted the stationary battery business is constrained by cell supply.

The solar roof tile remains delayed from reaching volume production until next year. Nonetheless, in an earnings call with analysts, Musk commented that “we saw higher revenues and better profitability in our energy business. In fact, it may have been our best quarter ever for solar”. Tesla CTO and self-professed battery tech fanatic JB Straubel said later in the call that cell supply is “somewhat tight” for the energy business which includes the Powerwall and Powerpack residential and grid storage products.

Tesla reported third-quarter energy storage deployments of 239MWh, an increase of 18% from the previous quarter (203MWh) and 118% compared to the prior year period. Energy storage continues to be the major catalyst in the segment revenue growth, which reached the second highest ever level of US$399.3 million. The company touted that due to the storage install growth, tripling of energy storage deployments in 2018, compared to 2017 was on track, despite expected seasonality issues in the fourth quarter of 2018. Supporting the growth claims was the eventual increase at Gigafactory 1 of its Powerwall production in the quarter, which was having an effect on reducing its order backlog.

Energy-Storage.news has reported on several grid-scale projects supplied or soon to be supplied with Tesla’s Powerpack battery systems during the quarter, including a contract to deliver a 52MWh storage system for a 280MW wind farm in Australia, the inauguration of New Zealand’s first grid battery storage facility and an order from Amazon for a 3.77MW system at the retail giant’s ‘fulfilment centre’ in Tilbury, England. Meanwhile the 129MWh battery Tesla put into operation in South Australia a few months ago is reportedly generating healthy revenues as well as network cost savings.

Julian Jansen, senior analyst, Energy Storage at IHS Markit pointed out that "strategically, it's quite simple" for Tesla to serve both the C&I and front-of-meter market segments with the Powerpack, which is scalable to either or both sets of applications. This includes acting as supplier and integrator of Powerpack systems in the US C&I market for projects developed and operated by AMS (Advanced Microgrid Solutions). Jansen said that partnership alone equates to more than 100MWh of operational Powerpacks, based on publicly announced figures from AMS.