It just seems kind of weird for Tesla to be saying "We'll sell you this thing you tell me you need" and also "Here's us building a thing to help you tell what you need."

1. Most utilities operate power plants, they don't operate power storage facilities. From a capital efficiency standpoint, power plants want to be run all the time, so there's not much that they can do that's particularly fancy.

In contrast, Tesla both buys and sells electricity, so they have the opportunity to arbitrage across time. This is especially true in places where the cost of electricity dips below 0.

2. There are some utilities that have stored power (e.g. hydro dams). I suspect that they don't employ the engineering talent to pull off something like Autobidder.

They are already doing better things than just dumb ML, they have proper models and constraint and planning software.

Monopoly grants with rate caps don't afford much aspirational budget for SV-wage engineers.

Edit: Well, seems someone mitm'd their app to find API. Can plug that into something that can analyse entire NZ's trends.