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Tesla Is Shipping Hundreds of Powerwall Batteries To Puerto Rico (futurism.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Futurism: In a continued streak of goodwill during this year's devastating hurricane season, Tesla has been shipping hundreds of its Powerwall batteries to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Since the hurricane hit on 20 September, much of the U.S. territory has been left without power -- about 97 percent, as of 27 September -- hampering residents' access to drinkable water, perishable food, and air conditioning. The island's hospitals are struggling to keep generators running as diesel fuel dwindles. Installed by employees in Puerto Rico, Tesla's batteries could be paired with solar panels in order to store electricity for the territory, whose energy grid may need up to six months to be fully repaired. Several power banks have already arrived to the island, and more are en route.
It will be hard to set up enough solar panels quickly to charge powerwalls, but in the meantime they could be charged at locations with power or generators, then moved to points of use. A small generator charging a battery can often be as useful as a larger generator.
How will these Powerwall units be recharged after they have been used up on the first go around? The electricity infrastructure is going to be down for quite a while, as the power plants and transmission lines have to be replaced. Whilst solar panels sound like a good idea, how will you install PV when the vast majority of buildings are wrecked, and building materiel is going to be prioritised for reconstruction of homes and public structures?
Don't you need to charge batteries? Where exactly are residents without power get the electricity to charge the batteries?
On the other hand, it is a great marketing scheme. Powerwall batteries + SolarCity roof panels = good business.
Who knows if I could do something similar, were I privileged? But thank you for your bright ideas, and your generosity. May your endeavors be met with success. You saw a gap, and dove right in.
What's not clear from the article is whether he's donating them or whether he expects to be paid for them later. I know they're not cheap but under the circumstances I'd hope he's giving them away for free.
Kudos for sending batteries.
So, how long are they to last before recharge?
Are they also supplying solar setups to recharge?
How heavy, can they be easily and safely disconnected and reconnected to home electrical after taking somewhere to charge?
What is the plan for disposing of these batteries? That's an awful lot of hazardous environmental waste to be disposed of in what... 1 to 5 years? Leeching all into the ground water...
so, a cynic could say this is just a marketing stunt, sure. but isn't a marketing stunt that may help people better than another car ad on TV?
i could live a little longer in this prison
...winning the Powerball is more likely to happen than getting assistance from the Trump Administration.
Except that, ya know, the Trump administration IS helping Puerto Rico, albeit it slowly at first. I don't like Trump either but you can't just make stuff up. I believe Mr. Trump himself even coined a two-word term for this kind of bullshit.
trump comment
hilarious and original
Oh this should do wonders for Puerto Rico's neglected electrical grid and it's capacity.
Experts from Germany (Sonnen GmbH) are coordinating and doing install on this project:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
Trump meanwhile did helpfully dedicate a golf trophy in honor of Puerto Rico:
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
In case you didn't know, Puerto Rico is an AMERICAN territory - the people of that territory are American citizens. But our current government for some reason is unwilling/unable to help, and is only much later getting assistance from those who ARE willing/able to help.
Not that I'm just blaming conservatives here - Bill Clinton was the one that signed the bill that removed the tax benefits that attracted a large percent of business to Puerto Rico, leaving their economy 70 billion dollars in debt once it was phased out.
But it DOES take a 'modern conservative' approach to be so completely uncaring/unable to help in this kind of recovery after a disaster.
"Miss, and you lose it all!"
Isn't it true that the Electric Utility in Puerto Rico is Owned and Operated by the government?
;)
Is that maybe why, The Electric Utility is having money problems, The Electric Grid was sub par, The disaster Planning was sub par and the fact that the Electric Utility is so totally unprepared to restore the Electric Grid?
My point being, it is to late now to do anything now. So lets not relive the past. But, maybe the Electric Utility should be privatized. There isn't much left and this mightl expedite the rebuilding process. And hopefully put the Electric Utility on firmer footing. That could be more prepared for the future storms to come.
So come on Tesla, Somebody? step up make the future better
creimer,
If you aren't happy about it. Complain to US management. Bitching about it in the comments is useless.
I hear they might have a chair for you on the management board:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Is that "enterprise-level" enough for you?
"Except that, ya know, the Trump administration IS helping Puerto Rico, albeit it slowly at first. I don't like Trump either but you can't just make stuff up. I believe Mr. Trump himself even coined a two-word term for this kind of bullshit."
Donald, go away.
Funny you should bring in advertising. This is publicity money can't buy, and this is *exactly* why they're doing it.
Donald, go away.
LOL! Come on now. If I were Donald Trump my response would've been, "President Trump is helping Puerto Rico, and it's the biggest most greatest help ever given!!! Crooked Hilary wouldn't have helped as bigly as this!! Make Puerto Rico great again!"
I am so happy to see that now your newest alts are getting karma blasted within minutes.
It would make me extremely happy to see the site's real moderators do their job and totally IP ban creimer.
If a normal poster with excellent karma built up 2 alts they could completely shortcircuit the moderation system. They could post as Anonymous Coward and effectively get the same starting score as our best posters.
A normal person with some urge to troll would assume the flaw in this plan is eventually being assigned a complete IP ban from a living breathing human but creimer demonstrates this is not true. Each day that he allowed to continue posting on slashdot is more affirmation that there are no consequences for exploiting flaws in our self moderation model. As a matter of fact it appears that site administration was compassionate enough to try to help him dodge the trolls... which he fucked up within a day.
Sure they watched it unfold and can see he's just a shitty poster. He even spams amazon ad-links from his alts, since he's stopped doing it on his main I assume that the ad-spam was a condition of his continued presence on this site.
Just pitch him in the trash plz.
I sure wouldn't want to try to carry a useful stack of panels through a hurricane-devastated landscape on foot.
Private enterprise must be better at allocating resources than a government agency.
When a private enterprise allocates resources poorly, it is punished with bankruptcy; when a government agency allocates resources poorly, it is rewarded with more tax monies.
Funny you should bring in advertising. This is publicity money can't buy, and this is *exactly* why they're doing it.
And it's a brilliant move, too, since it gives them a chance to demonstrate to the world the utility of their product and how it solves a problem (lightning-fast rollout of 24/7 power) that "traditional" power grids cannot.
It's one thing for a company to say "give us money and we promise we can do this for you", and a much more powerful thing when the company can say "look what we did for Puerto Rico on a small budget and miniscule timeline".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
... about how they construct their society. Beggars can't blown away by the hurricane, and nobody cares.
You are seriously fucking evil, troll or no. I just converted to Christianity so I know that you will burn in Hell.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
a few years ago, I was quite impressed with how all the utility poles were made out of reinforced concrete and were up high enough for trees to not be an issue. I have now learned that this is a big fat lesson learned from Hurricane Andrew in particular.
I've never been to Puerto Rico, but from I understand, their utility poles were not built to such standards because to date, they'd been lucky.
Up here in Massachusetts, we don't get much in the way of hurricanes, so most of our utility poles, including the high tension lines, are made out of rotting wood pilings. If it rots too much, it gets "fixed" with 2x4s and some 1/4-20 threaded rods.
There's a lesson in here somewhere, but if Puerto Rico has its act together, they'll probably want to rebuild a little tougher, maybe with distributed storage, maybe with more robust power distribution. I'm a Tesla skeptic, but I'm cheering them on here, since it looks like they have an incentive to demonstrate something working.
"...could be paired with solar panels..."
So the don't actually have solar panels for them, then?
In which case the question would be, what real value shipping chargeable batteries to a place with no electricity?
Wouldn't any generation capacity already be at use in critical functions, ie no spare time to run to charge these things?
-Styopa
I believe Mr. Trump himself even coined a two-word term for this kind of bullshit.
Cov...fefe?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...here's Powerwall
Elon Musk has proven that he can allocate resources in ways that are fruitful for everyone; thus, disregarding a few governmental handouts here and there, people have voluntarily handed over their resources to Musk (e.g., by purchasing his products), and they have done so to such a degree that Musk has built the ability to quickly make large-scale allocations of capital like this.
It's not a privilege; it's an ability, one that has been built up through the careful proof to society that he's worthy of wielding said ability. This is very different from, say, elected officials, who do indeed enjoy privileges (ones that are likely unwarranted).
Then he could hire them for $5/day to work on building hyperloop track, polishing Tesla tires, or opening the sacks of government grant checks.
Creimer,
I am sure you read:
"Tesla shipping hundreds of Powerbars to Puerto Rico" and started salivating.
So, he gets to take a huge write off on his taxes for the donation, and then his sole sourced installers get money for the installation of not only the batteries, but also any solar to supply them.
All while quietly locking everyone else out of the market. In the name of "humanitarian" needs.
--WooooHoooo--
LOL best Creimer post this thread.
Neither feathers nor kittens would have been my first choice for generating electrical power to charge batteries. My guess is that the weight of feathers and/or kittens needed to provide a megawatt of electrical power would probably be more than the same power generated by solar arrays, but I'd be very interested in hearing the results of your experiment showing the contrary.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Neither feathers nor kittens would have been my first choice for generating electrical power to charge batteries. My guess is that the weight of feathers and/or kittens needed to provide a megawatt of electrical power would probably be more than the same power generated by solar arrays, but I'd be very interested in hearing the results of your experiment showing the contrary.
Seems you cut out all of my part of the post , but here we are. So I'll drop some comments that aren't specifically related to you.
Anyhow, the US military is very capable of setting up mini-cities as need be. They can even do so-called alternative powering schemes. Like Solar https://us.sunpower.com/blog/2... wind - http://www.decentralized-energ... .
They aren't going to set up a big system like the examples shown for PR, but that's where Tesla's PowerWalls really fit the bill. And they can be charged by equally deliverable PV panels.
The remarks by some Slashdotters have been concerning, especially for a site frequented by people presumably tech-savvy. A company does something humanitarian, and Slashdotters don't seem to think the military can deliver it, that it won't work once its there because they can't deliver solar cells, which is kinda weird because they have to believe that something can't be delivered and can be at the same time.
More concerning to me is that our presumed smart people seem to think alternative energy is still in the early 1960's. Too expensive, batteries too little storage capacity, wind power just a toy. All things that have long since been untrue.
Hell, in my area, we have installed enough wind power that they can feather back during off-peak times. It's freaky to see a site starting up and stopping as needed. In fact, wind has made the transition to mainstream energy as far as most around here ae concerned.
Puerto Rico will make good use of these PowerWalls, and Tesla will reap a lot of goodwill and publicity - but Jesus on a pogo stick, it takes a mind like a bag full of warts to hate a humanitarian effort like that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't know. You could probably generate a lot of power with a bunch of kittens on a treadmill and a laser pointer.
My gut tells me that...Elon Musk is doing a good thing, for the sake of doing a good thing. Yes, he does the PT Barnum from time to time, selling promises with great flair, kinda has to...but these PowerWall deliveries are still a good thing, at a very basic human level.
My gut tells me that...Elon Musk is doing a good thing, for the sake of doing a good thing. Yes, he does the PT Barnum from time to time, selling promises with great flair, kinda has to...but these PowerWall deliveries are still a good thing, at a very basic human level.
From what I understand, Musk doesn't identify with people on the individual level very much, but more on humanity as a large group. But I'll buy the good thing idea. It fits with his personality.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Seems you cut out all of my part of the post , but here we are. So I'll drop some comments that aren't specifically related to you.
Oops, sorry-- My response had been addressed to the previous post (the one saying solar panels were not light compared to kittens or feathers); I mis-threaded it.
Good comments, if I had mod points I'd mod you up.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Seems you cut out all of my part of the post , but here we are. So I'll drop some comments that aren't specifically related to you.
Oops, sorry-- My response had been addressed to the previous post (the one saying solar panels were not light compared to kittens or feathers); I mis-threaded it.
Good comments, if I had mod points I'd mod you up.
No problem. It gave me the chance to skewer the strange new inhabitants of Slashdot. 8^)
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Just send one of our nuclear subs to provide a source of main power...or maybe a carrier. A carrier would be better of course but they may be too busy threatening countries thousands of miles away from the US.
A nuclear ship could even be a long term solution for PR. It could provide power for the island while they get solar/wind established and rebuild their infrastructure. If bad weather rolls in the ship unplugs and finds clear water until the storm has passed...;)
They're more trustworthy than anonymous cowards, that's for sure.
When an AC posts the AC can't rely on reputation. To get the post taken seriously the AC can only rely on readily verifiable or well-known facts and a reasonably understandable chain of reasoning, otherwise they must expect their post to be ignored.
When a name says "Trust me. I'm a doctor or president or news organisation or whatever.", you've got to ask yourself why the name can't, or doesn't want to, make their statement the same way the AC has to. Why do you have to trust them?
The only thing I'm going to ask you to trust me on is that I don't speak for all anonymous cowards.
I was think more of rubbing the kittens across a rubber sheet to produce static electricity.