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Merge: charon (03/10 22:53 GMT)
Elon Musk Offers to Fix Australian Power Network in 100 Days
Elon Musk, boss of electric car firm Tesla, says he can help solve South Australia's power crisis within 100 days [bbc.com] - and if not he'll do it for free.
The offer follows a series of blackouts in the state.
On Thursday, Tesla executive Lyndon Rive had said the company could install 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage in 100 days.
When asked on Twitter how serious he was about the offer, Mr Musk said if Tesla failed, there'd be no bill.
"Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?" he tweeted in response to Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Australian software maker Atlassian.
Having offered to "make the $ happen (& politics)", Mr Cannon-Brookes then told Mr Musk: "You're on mate."
Tesla to Deliver 100 MWh of Batteries to South Australia in 100 Days... or It's Free
Put your money where your tweets [arstechnica.com] are:
On Thursday morning, the Australian Financial Review published [afr.com] a story saying that Lyndon Rive, Tesla's vice president for energy products, promised the company could deliver 100-300 MWh of storage to South Australia within 100 days of signing a contract.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the billionaire behind software company Atlassian, saw the story and tweeted a link saying [twitter.com] "Holy s#%t." Cannon-Brookes then tweeted at Tesla CEO Elon Musk [twitter.com] "How serious are you about this bet? If I can make the $ happen (& politics), can you guarantee the 100MW in 100 days?" Musk responded in a tweet [twitter.com], "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?"
[...] Early on, Tesla worked in private with companies to sort out pricing depending on the size of the contract. But last night, Musk publicly responded to Cannon-Brookes with rates. "$250/kWh at the pack level for 100MWh+ systems. Tesla is moving to fixed and open pricing and terms for all products," Musk tweeted [twitter.com]. The rate would bring the price of a 100MWh system to $25 million. That price was less than what Rive quoted in the Australian Financial Review—the VP estimated "large installations had come down to $US400-600 per kilowatt hour of capacity depending on the configuration, or about $US50 million ($A65 million) per 100MWh, with reductions for large scale installations." In the Australian Financial Review article, Rive had said that the quick turnaround would be possible because Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory is ramping up production [arstechnica.com]. The Gigafactory is where Tesla will produce large quantities of Lithium-ion batteries in partnership with Panasonic.
Mike Cannon-Brookes [wikipedia.org] and Atlassian [wikipedia.org].
