Puerto Rico in talks with Tesla for batteries; Sonnen to help build microgrids

Enlarge / SAN ISIDRO, PUERTO RICO – OCTOBER 07: People sit in their home lit by a single donated solar lamp more than two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit the island. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged to send hundreds of energy-storing batteries to Puerto Rico to help the island recover from the devastating hurricane that took all of the island’s 3.4 million residents offline. Although no numbers have been announced yet—it’s unclear exactly how many batteries Tesla will send, how much they will cost the country, or when they will be delivered—a tweet from Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello late Friday night said that a team from the Puerto Rican government was in talks with a team from Tesla to make the project happen.

Great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities. Next steps soon to follow.

— Ricardo Rossello (@ricardorossello) October 7, 2017

Tesla announced last weekend that a 100MW/129MWh South Australian Powerpack battery installation was halfway complete. That project grew out of a Twitter bet between Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Musk—the Tesla CEO promised that his company could install a battery system in 100 days to help South Australia in the wake of widespread blackouts the summer before. If Tesla missed the 100-day deadline, the system would be free of charge.

Tesla has also built solar-and-battery systems for Ta’u and for Kauai. “The Tesla team has [built solar grids] for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too,” Musk said in a tweet. He noted that moving forward would be in the hands of the Puerto Rico government, commercial stakeholders, and the people of Puerto Rico.