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After Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes back to back in just a few weeks, along with other islands in the Caribbean, most of their power grid was completely destroyed. Tesla quickly started quietly shipping Powerwalls there to try to get power back on to some houses with solar arrays.
Now CEO Elon Musk says that Tesla could rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid with batteries and solar on a bigger scale.
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."
Source: https://electrek.co/2017/10/05/elon-musk-tesla-rebuild-puerto-ricos-power-grid-batteries-solar/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Entropy on Sunday October 08 2017, @06:30PM (1 child)
Except the power plants are just fine, so it's not all gone. You're going to need infrastructure to run power as some level of centralization is necessary for economics sake. If that's centralizing 3 houses to one battery pack and a solar farm, a neighborhood, or a large part of the island is the question but regardless you're going to need wires.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 08 2017, @09:10PM
Wait, this is Tesla. Shouldn't they be able to distribute that power wirelessly? :-)
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