Orange and Rockland Utilities is partnering with electric car company Tesla to bring battery power to some of its 300,000 customers on the electric grid.

Spokesperson Mike Donovan says the utility company would install Tesla batteries in certain locations and use them to power businesses and homes. The hope, he says, is to take stress off the grid and save everyone energy costs by having to build fewer substations.

"We had planned a $65 million substation but pushed that back a few years to build a battery," he says.

Donovan says O&R is starting small, installing only six to eight batteries in strategic areas that he says the company will determine later this year.

"These are big units," he says. "They'd be used for apartments, strip malls, manufacturing buildings."

Company officials say its partnership with Tesla is a three-year project. The first stage of installing batteries, they say, will take about 11 months.