Elon Musk , your friendly neighborhood billionaire , has say Tesla has the power to remake Puerto Rico ’s power system if the government is concerned . And , well , it sounds like they ’re very concerned .
Hurricane Maria ruin Puerto Rico ’s electric grid more than two week ago , leaving the U.S. territory ’s 3.4 million house physician without power . exercise to reestablish a grid that was rickety and single-foot by year of debt and misdirection has been ho-hum and only 10.7 percent of residents had might as of Friday .
While restoring power is priority numeral one , Maria has shown that Puerto Rico will have tobuild back its grid differentlyto be resilient to future storms and to be more climate - friendly .
Enter Elon Musk . A Twitter user share Earther’sarticle on Puerto Rico ’s grid(yes , I ’m humblebragging ) while pray Musk to set Puerto Rico up with a grid that runs on the sun and has copious battery storage .
Musk respond , fundamentally say “ yeah , I could do that if the great unwashed want ” in 280 characters ( side tone : this did not have to be a 280 - fibre tweet , promote showing why280 theatrical role is bad ) .
The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world , but there is no scalability limit , so it can be done for Puerto Rico too . Such a decision would be in the helping hand of the PR govt , PUC , any commercial-grade stakeholders and , most significantly , the people of PR .
— Elon Musk ( @elonmusk)October 5 , 2017
This is n’t the first time Musk has responded to a Twitter user asking him to fix an electricity grid . In March , he answer to a tweet about South Australia ’s rolling memory loss problems by saying Tesla could instal enough computer storage in 100 day or the project would be spare . Since then , Tesla has inked a dealwith the South Australian government and a wind farm developer who will sire the electricity the battery will stash away . The100 day countdown formally started last Fridayso it ’s still tbd on if Tesla can redeem the large lithium battery computer memory plant life ever constructed .
Tesla also has a major task on the Hawaiian island of Kauai : In March , it open a utility - shell solar panel and barrage power plant that can provide juice for4,500 habitation for up to four hours .
That ’s a enceinte step for solar - connected batteries , but still only equates to a fraction of the force needed by the island ’s 22,405 menage . The South Australia project will be big enough to serve well 30,000 homes . But both those projects are a far call from make a system that serves 1.2 million menage in Puerto Rico .
Despite the farfetched nature of the projection , Puerto Rico ’s government is listening . Puerto Rico ’s regulator quote retweeted Musk say “ rent ’s talk ” because now all diplomacy takes seat on Twitter , and Musk has already respond affirmatively .
I would be glad to utter . Hopefully , Tesla can be helpful .
— Elon Musk ( @elonmusk)October 6 , 2017
Musk is also known for big public lecture , from claim he convinced Daimler to invest$10 billion to invest in galvanic carstobuilding only 260 of the 1,500 Model 3spromised in the third quarter of 2017 . That ’s not to say it would n’t be awe-inspiring if Musk could aid the beleaguered island where service has been slow to arrive from the federal government . But it ’s far from a done deal , and even if Tesla can have , it may have to do so at the cost of other , less high - visibility projectsaccording to GreenTech Media .
While there ’s good cause to be skeptical that this will come to pass , there ’s no reason to doubt that Puerto Rico is looking at way to re - envisage its grid so its residents are n’t left in the dark again . And like the rest of the worldly concern , it will also eventually have to run on clean energy in orderliness to reduce carbon pollution and forfend the worst event of climate alteration .
Given that they ’re starting from scratch , there ’s no clock time good than the present tense to do just that . We ’ll see if Musk and Tesla are really a part of it . It seems a mountain of citizenry in Puerto Rico and on Twitter are hope they are .
.@elonmuskwhy not mix solar , battery storage and electrical vehicle in the reconstruction of Puerto Rico?https://t.co / kKZRy5tz0A
— Mark Ruffalo ( @MarkRuffalo)October 6 , 2017
Governor , please do n’t leave this at “ let ’s talk ” . This could be a plot - record changer for the island and the whole satellite . allow ’s make it happen !
— Gerardo Otero Ríos ( @oterorios4)October 6 , 2017
If you make this happen , Puerto Rico and all future generation will be everlastingly thankful . Probably less hurricane for them too !
— Tommy Torres ( @Tommy_Torres)October 6 , 2017
https://twitter.com/embed/status/916115081267736576
The Puerto Rico Science Museum@ECOEXPLORATORIOcan be the vehicle for educating on renewable energy . An chance to jump into the future
— Ada Monzón ( @adamonzon)October 6 , 2017
Swooning hard .
Puerto Rico 2.0 could be one of the first major step to Earth 2.0
Equitable , renewable .
This could actually be happening.https://t.co/16Ca9mYmAD
— Eric Holthaus ( @EricHolthaus)October 6 , 2017
Update , October 6th , 5:15pm : Elon Musk nip this good afternoon that he ’s diverting resources from the Tesla Semi in part to increase assault and battery output for Puerto Rico . We ’ve give out to Musk for additional clarification as to whether he has reached a courtly agreement with Governor Rossello .
Tesla Semi unveil now Nov 16 . Diverting resource to secure Model 3 bottleneck & increase shelling product for Puerto Rico & other moved areas .
Elon MuskSolar powerTESLA
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