Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk says that he believes he can rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid with batteries and solar power.
ADVERTISEMENT Musk tweeted on Thursday. “Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.”
Tesla has already done similar battery and solar power projects with the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative in Hawaii and in American Samoa.
Both projects were designed to supply power for much smaller populations than Puerto Rico, however. Still, the Tesla CEO is confident that his company’s existing operations can be scaled up to meet larger demand.
Currently, under 10 percent of the island has power. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said on Monday that it could take one month to restore power to only a quarter of households in the territory.
The Puerto Rico state owned electric company says that some households be without power for four to six months. Any Tesla solution would likely be aimed more toward the long-term, rather than the immediate restoration of power that's required.
Tesla, however, has sent hundreds of its Powerwall batteries, which collect and store solar energy, to help provide power more immediately to Puerto Ricans.
Ajvailbro on October 6th, 2017 at 03:24 UTC »
Just to be clear, he said they could theoretically do it, while tweeting his response to a question asked by another twitter user. He in no way said he plans to or is going to.
I_notta_crazy on October 6th, 2017 at 01:18 UTC »
He says he wants to do it with batteries and solar power. This could be a chance to really see what that combo can do. Solar without batteries is probably never going to be able to handle all electrical needs, but if they can make this work, it could be a huge step forward for changing the way we get energy. What's happened in PR is devastating, but the silver lining here is that there's nothing like a disaster to help you get some bleeding-edge infrastructure.
Asus_i7 on October 6th, 2017 at 01:05 UTC »
Sadly for Puerto Rico, it's not that they don't have people who could rebuild the grid, it's that the Puerto Rican government can't afford to. And I'm not sure that FEMA is jumping at the chance to pay for a new power grid, let alone a 100% green grid.