Austin will soon be home to a new, large-scale solar neighbor being built by Tesla, which also plans a manufacturing plant in Austin.
This will act as the first Tesla Solar neighborhood and "the nation’s most sustainable residential community," according to Fox 7 Austin.
"... This is an exciting idea, and that kind of development probably is the wave of the future for residential development to get greater and better uses of batteries and solar tiles and the like," Austin Mayor Steve Adler told Yahoo Finance.
Named the SunHouse at Easton Park, since the homes will be built on land in Brookfield Residential’s Easton Park community, the new neighborhood will feature Tesla V3 solar roof tiles and Powerwall 2 battery storages that will be installed in phases, Fox 7 Austin reported.
"I'm hopeful that Tesla and Elon Musk build a lot of housing for the number of employees that they have coming in, even as they're working out these new technologies. We need the units," Adler said.
Tesla will use "state-of-art" features that will "allow for ongoing learning and innovation," Tesla said, as reported by Fox 7 Austin. Elon Musk also commented the what the company learns from this community will help in how the company develops and launches new products.
"Austin has been one of the real leaders in the country on developing energy alternatives, and we have significant investment right now in solar and wind in addition to some existing gas plants and the like. But we have programs to encourage the distribution of that sustainable power. We have community solar in those areas where individual homeowners couldn't afford to otherwise participate. I think that that also is the direction that Austin and other cities can head," Adler told Yahoo Finance.
The first phase of installations began in June with sample houses being constructed. The neighborhood is a joint project of Tesla Energy, Brookfield Asset Management Inc., and Dacra, according to a statement from Brookfield.
The Brookfield statement also said the homes will have backup power storage in case of a power outage or natural disaster like February's snowstorm, which left hundreds of thousands without power across Texas.
Tesla is also in the process of building a $1.1 billion Gigafactory Tesla facility in Austin. The automotive factory is scheduled to be operational by the end of this year and is expected to bring 10,000 jobs to the city.