After sending hundreds of Tesla’s Powerwall batteries to help those in Puerto Rico still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Maria, Elon Musk may be tasked with an even more massive project on the island territory. Last Thursday Musk used Twitter to essentially offer his company’s services in re-building Puerto Rico’s power grid.
He stated that with the approval of the local government, public utilities, and all of those who call the island home, Tesla could emulate work it has done in other, similar geographies. This work includes a project completed last year by Tesla’s subsidiary SolarCity which encompassed the installation of a microgrid powered by renewable energy sources on the American Samoa island of Ta’u.
Musk’s outlook and optimism related to energy work is nothing new. He most recently stated that his company would provide a 100-megawatt battery farm in Southern Australia in 100 days, or it would be free. The $50-million project commenced on September 29.
Puerto Rico’s governor was quick to respond to Musk, insinuating that the island could serve as a flagship project for expanding Tesla’s methods of harvesting and storing solar power. It’s been reported that Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was in need of an upgrade before the onslaught of recent storms, so Tesla’s innovative approaches and the timing of the situation might be the perfect mix.
Helping to move the needle on this potential project are the environmental benefits of a solar-powered grid, as well as the ability to get things re-started more quickly in the event of a future storm. Less reliance on imported oil would also make the electric grid much cheaper to operate.
The most prominent obstacles are timing, expense, and scale. The island needs power now, and the project which Musk undertook on Ta’u required more than a year for an island that is roughly 1/200th the size of Puerto Rico. Then there are concerns over how expansive energy storage capabilities could be, as well as the magnitude of the costs associated with connecting to and distributing from a new kind of power source.