In response to a tweet yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that it would be possible for Tesla to rebuild Puerto Rico's hurricane devastated energy system with Tesla technologies. Hurricane Maria made landfall more than two weeks ago and a vast majority of the island is still without power.
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
Musk said that a decision to overhaul the territory's power grid would be up to the people of Puerto Rico. Last night, their governor, Ricardo Rossello, took to Twitter to take Mr. Musk up on that offer.
@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
Musk responded to Rosello that he would be "happy to talk." The mega-CEO also made earlier promises to help the ravaged island by sending along hundreds of Powerwall batteries to help bring power to those who need it most.
Musk is also working on bringing 100-Megawatts of power to South Australia in just 100 days. The installation will be the largest of its kind and potentially power as many 30,000 homes in the region. At the beginning of the year, an 80-MW Powerpack station came online to help reduce Southern California’s dependence on fossil fuels. Elon Musk and Tesla are making great strides to provide the infrastructure necessary to support greater reliance on renewable energy, and if he and the people of Puerto Rico join forces, the island territory could stand as exemplar to the world of clean-energy sustainability.
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