> What are the industry incentives for Tesla to do this, instead of utilities?

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.

But those energy providers ("utilities") have the necessary political and budget power to pull off something like Autobidder. In many countries they are controlling local governments. Buying such a logistical solution is peanuts for them, automation is everything.

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

If they had the will and resources to do it, they would’ve done it. Having been in both engineering first and engineering last orgs, it’s clear they cannot execute in this regard (like a tech company).

Right. Because these utilities have, as Ruban says, "political and budget power" they are fat and happy, and don't bother with engineering innovation.

To be fair, in many cases markets are explicitly set up to preclude innovation.

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