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After spending much of the past six months talking up the value of combining electric car and battery maker Tesla with solar installer SolarCity, Elon Musk (chairman and largest shareholder of both companies) secured shareholder approval for the deal, creating a combined company with the breadth to take distributed power generation mainstream.
The $2.6 billion all-stock deal, first proposed in June, creates an integrated clean energy company with offerings ranging from rooftop solar systems (and eventually solar roofing tiles, Musk says) to battery storage systems to electric vehicles.
The company’s Powerwall 2.0, the residential version of Tesla’s behind-the-meter lithium-ion energy storage system, is expected to hit the U.S. market next month along with a new inverter made at its Gigafactory in Sparks, NV, at a price advantage likely to strengthen Tesla’s market share, according to IHS Technology analyst Marianne Boust. She added that the size of the second-generation Powerwall, at 13.5kWh, suggests it’s aimed at off-grid applications and users looking to disconnect from the grid.
