Elon Musk inches closer to one-stop shop for all home energy needs: Following the USD 2.6 bn merger of Solarcity and Tesla last month, Chairman Elon Musk is consolidating his plan to create a sustainable energy company, writes Natalie Shoemaker for BigThink. The merger allows Tesla to sell all-electric goods under one unified brand, especially when considering the Powerwall home battery from last year, and the new re-imagined solar tiles for rooftops. The original Musk Master Plan from 2006 can be summarized into: Build sports car, use that money to build an affordable car, use that money to build an even more affordable car, while doing the above also provide zero emission electric power generation options. Don’t tell anyone. The SolarCity merger plays into Musk’s revised Master Plan, Part Deux, which can be summed as: Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage, expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments, develop a self-driving capability that is 10x safer than manual via massive fleet learning, and then make it so your vehicle can make you money when you’re not using it.

This is all just a mainland America thing, right? Nope. One day after the acquisition of SolarCity, Tesla tweeted that Ta’ū, an island in American Samoa, is running on nearly 100% solar energy thanks to 5,300+ solar panels and 60 Tesla Powerpacks. Before solar, Ta’ū used 109.5k gallons of imported diesel annually, which cost it USD 8 mn every year and made it reliant on other countries to run its generators. Now stop for a moment and consider we’re one of the most ideally-situated countries in the world when it comes to solar power and it’s hard not to be a bit grumpy about how the whole feed-in tariff program has been handled…