Tesla's Elon Musk offers to rebuild Puerto Rico's electric grid, governor says "let's...

[William Gayde]

After Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico and obliterated its power grid, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed interest in helping to rebuild the island's infrastructure. Given the lackluster and poorly received relief efforts by the president and US government, this has the potential to be Tesla's flagship project if they go through with it. As of publishing, only 10% of Puerto Ricans have power. After a Twitter user posed the question of rebuilding the grid with solar and battery technology, Musk tweeted a promising response expressing Tesla's interest in the project.

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 hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 5, 2017

Thursday evening, Ricardo Rossello, the governor of Puerto Rico, responded to the request saying "let's tallk."

@elonMusk Let's talk. Do you want to show the world the power and scalability of your #TeslaTechnologies? PR could be that flagship project. https://t.co/McnHKwisqc

— Ricardo Rossello (@ricardorossello) October 6, 2017

Early Friday morning Musk tweeted back saying that he would be "happy to talk." With such enthusiasm from both sides, it's clear that this could be a serious project and not just another of Musk's dreams.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is of course funding. Puerto Rico has struggled with massive amounts of debt recently and it's not clear who would be willing or even able pay for the project. Upgrading existing infrastructure to solar is more expensive in the short term, but building a solar grid from the ground up has similar or lower costs than building new coal or gas power plants.

Puerto Rico has a population of over 3 million people which would put the project on a scale never seen before. Tesla recently won a project in South Australia to power 30,000 homes with a 100MW facility. Puerto Rico's plan could be 100 times larger.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/71293-tesla-elon-musk-offers-rebuild-puerto-rico-electric.html

 

[wiyosaya]

Interesting. Maybe Musk is good for something?

 

[Puiu]

They'll need a lot $$ to make it happen.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Tesla certainly has the financial muscle to help. I'd be happy if Musk and the governor could work something out.

 

[MonsterZero]

Boom! take that Trump.

Tesla offering to build a power plant and restore power to all of PR while Trump is shooting bricks with paper towel rolls. SMDH

 

[Jibberish18]

Tesla certainly has the financial muscle to help. I'd be happy if Musk and the governor could work something out.

Elon doesn't seem to be the donating kind if that's what you mean. At least not in huge amounts. Still, if they could do it and find a way to prevent catastrophic failure in the event of another hurricane for example, that would be excellent would it not?

Speaking of funding, SOMEONE has the money to give. We've got more billionaires living amongst us in 2017 then chicken mcnuggets in a $5 McDonalds Chicken McNugget meal (I couldn't think of anything else lol)

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Given the lackluster and poorly received relief efforts by the president and US government

Boom! take that Trump.

Tesla offering to build a power plant and restore power to all of PR while Trump is shooting bricks with paper towel rolls. SMDH

Why waste an opportunity to take a shot at Trump, right? As if there is some Federal Electrical Department that isn't doing what there supposed to right now.

Or maybe Puerto Rico has no power and if someone offers to provide it the answer is obviously yes. Who pays for it is another question because Tesla has already borrowed every dime someone will lend them to build their cars.

Unless someone actually benefits from this, it's nothing more than a popularity stunt.

 

[Uncle Al]

This could be to electrical grids what cell phones have done to telecommunications. Possible lower over all operating costs but they need to take a serious look at the O&M since that is where the highest costs over time are ......

 

[DaveBG]

This man is literally changing the world one battery at a time.

 

[Godel]

While I've no objection to installing lots of PV and batteries, what they really need is small modern nuclear generators.

BTW, are their current power problems related mostly to generation or distribution? There's no use having all the power generation in the world if the transmission lines across the island and to premises are wiped out.

 

[captaincranky]

Well, Puerto Rico means "rich port", perhaps Musk has taken it too literally. In any event, I doubt Musk realizes any "government subsidies", would have to come from the US mainland government. (Hm, or maybe he does).

Then too, there's the whole thing about Puerto Rico's reluctance to accept statehood, because then they'd be liable for federal income taxes.

And yet they, whimper, and demand our help when disaster strikes.All the while, wondering why those pesky ships are slow getting there.

Musk owes Panasonic a couple of billion dollars for his battery factory, which, (Ido believe), isn't running anywhere near Musk's sales pitch for demand.

Just a couple of points, lest anyone start thinking that douche bag is a "humanitarian".

 

[Mike Cubic]

"Tesla recently won a project in South Australia to power 30,000 homes with a 100MW facility. Puerto Rico's plan could be 100 times larger"

Meaning that it would take 10,000MWp I.e. 10GWp of PV power and a 10GWh Battery backup.

10 GWp would require 200,000 Ha of flat land at a cost of roughly $1 per Wp (very conservative) x 10,000,000,000 Watts = $10,000,000,000 which would exclude upgrades to transmission/distribution lines.

Would be amazing if they did manage to pull it off, it would be the largest PV plant in the world, current largest is only half a gigawatt

 

[seefizzle]

Riddle me this batman... let's say they install a bunch of solar panels. What happens when the next hurricane strikes and all the solar panels turn fly off into the ocean?

Is there any way to make solar panels hurricane proof? Or would they just have to rebuild their entire solar array every time a big storm comes?

 

[Mike Cubic]

Riddle me this batman... let's say they install a bunch of solar panels. What happens when the next hurricane strikes and all the solar panels turn fly off into the ocean?

Is there any way to make solar panels hurricane proof? Or would they just have to rebuild their entire solar array every time a big storm comes?

Fair dinkum reply, an article based on hurricane sandy might solve your query

http://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-hail-hurricanes/