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Elon Musk Says Tesla Could Rebuild Puerto Rico's Power Grid With Batteries, Solar (electrek.co)
After Puerto Rico was hit by hurricane Maria, Tesla quickly started shipping hundreds of its Powerwall batteries there to try and get power back on to some houses with solar arrays. Now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to say that Tesla could rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid with batteries and solar on a bigger scale. Electrek reports: Puerto Rico's electricity rates were already quite high at around $0.20 per kWh and reliant on fossil fuels. After it was pointed out that Puerto Rico's destroyed grid is an opportunity to build a better one, Musk wrote on Twitter: "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 Puerto Rico government, PUC (Public Utilities Commission), any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of Puerto Rico."
Musk is referring to solar and battery projects that Tesla recently deployed on other islands, like Tesla's visually stunning Powerpack and solar project in Kauai. Those projects power grids for much smaller populations, but Musk has always said that it's scalable to support much larger islands, like Puerto Rico, and ultimately entire continents, which are just like big islands to a certain degree. The thing is that those systems are still reliant on power lines for larger communities and devices, like solar panels and wind turbines, that are still subject to problems with natural disasters. The advantage of Tesla's solution is that it has the potential to be distributed, which increases the odds of at least some systems staying online or bringing some back online quicker.
Musk is referring to solar and battery projects that Tesla recently deployed on other islands, like Tesla's visually stunning Powerpack and solar project in Kauai. Those projects power grids for much smaller populations, but Musk has always said that it's scalable to support much larger islands, like Puerto Rico, and ultimately entire continents, which are just like big islands to a certain degree. The thing is that those systems are still reliant on power lines for larger communities and devices, like solar panels and wind turbines, that are still subject to problems with natural disasters. The advantage of Tesla's solution is that it has the potential to be distributed, which increases the odds of at least some systems staying online or bringing some back online quicker.
Which makes paying $0,20/kWh for power all the more difficult, no?
Solar is starting to take over in sunny parts of the mainland even where power is much cheaper than that; its costs have gone way down over the years.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Never let a disaster go to waste. $$$$$$$
Presumably because he's a busy man with at least three companies to run and he can't be made aware of and try to solve every possibly problem on earth.
But when large highly talked about events happen people tend to learn new information about them and act on it.
Powerpacks are warrantied for 10 years, and it's not like they just suddenly "die" after that. Li-ions suffer their most capacity drop in their first year of operation / first 50-100 cycles, but the rate of loss declines after that. As an example with Teslas, the average capacity loss is 4% in the first year, but by year 5, typical total capacity loss averages only 6-7%.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
I...wouldn't exactly...want to be Puerto Rico trying to float the bonds required to build that shiny new infrastructure; but it is worth noting that their current(or pre-getting-destroyed) grid was actually absurdly skewed toward expensive fuels.
Per EIA electricity production was almost 50% oil, 34% natural gas, 17% coal, 2% misc renewables.
That is a really, really, lousy set of numbers when you are already a poor island with relatively high transportation costs. Even if you don't give a damn about the environment, oil is silly expensive compared to coal as a base load option; and natural gas has always been quite versatile in terms of spinup/spindown and plant construction; plus it has gotten crazy cheap of late.
Aside from trying to get the anachronistic legal situation that ruins their transport costs sorted out; that's a generating situation ripe to be replaced by something cheaper; and a time when it already needs substantial repair and/or replacement is a convenient opportunity.
Are the expensive power generation facilities destroyed? No.
Just the wires between houses need to be replaced.
Another hurricane will probably destroy Elon's solar and wind so they will have to start over.
The expensive power plants are still there, mostly paid for, and ready to be connected to the wires.
The wires between houses need to be constructed in either scenario.
It's a good thing he tested on smaller islands first. Now we know the weight of the batteries won't cause Puerto Rico to tip over like Guam.
Part of the treaties that formally attached Puerto Rico to the US requires a vote every 10 years as to whether or not they want to 1) stay how they are, 2) become a state, 3) seek independence.
The last vote was in June. Become a state got 97% of the vote.
However, anything but option 1 requires Congress to do something. And I really don't think the current Republican Congress is interested in adding some safe Democratic seats to Congress.