Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of government-subsidized electric car giant Tesla and Space-X, says he can solve the South Australian’s and the federal government’s energy problems in 100 days by building a huge battery farm. If he doesn’t succeed, he will deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free, the Guardian reported.
@mcannonbrookes Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2017
Of course nothing is free. Will it be what the Australian government really needs or will it cover up failures in alternative energy? Pay me now or pay me later.
The Musk challenge is one they likely need to accept. The millennial’s hero would go up a few more notches if that’s even possible.
The Tesla genius’s promise came after comments by Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, to AFR insisting the company could pull it off.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australian co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Atlassian, on Friday tweeted Elon Musk, asking if Tesla was serious about being able to install the capacity. Musk assured him he was.
Cannon-Brookes is now working on making it happen.
Musk can make good on the promise. Tesla recently completed an installation of an 80MWh grid-scale battery farm in southern California within just 90 days, which cost $100 Million US, according to the guardian.
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The anti-fossil fuel people are getting pumped over this. Unfortunately, the people will pay a lot more in the end and the hope of slowing the annihilation of fossil fuels might be dashed.
Alternative energy is a good thing, eliminating fossil fuels is not.
Coal-fired power plants have been closing across Australia in recently, hiking energy bills and contributing to blackouts like those suffered in South Australia.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is calling for a return to fossil fuels as part of a “coal-fired future.”
While the battery farms Musk is building — and we do appreciate them — can hold huge amounts of storage and will likely eliminate blackouts — it will cost and they rely on subsidies.
Musk accomplishes a lot with subsidies — big subsidies.
Cash flow and pragmatism never come into account for the lofty visionary. He’s a big idea guy who talks of “enabling your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it”. It works for his gullible investors but is it working and at what cost?
Last July, Musk revealed his master plan and according to Zerohedge, it’s his second master plan. This, his second master plan is to create beautiful seamless solar roofs; expand his electric vehicle line; develop really safe self-driving vehicles; and get your car to make money for you.
Big ideas, all good things, but he needs inordinate investments including your tax money to do it, while his believers crush the most reasonable forms of energy.
His grand ideas are valuable but maybe faith in them should be a bit more muted given his funding sources. Are the ideas working because of inherent value or because he has an endless flow of cash from investors and taxpayers?
In the end, will this be a boon for Australia? What will it cost the average Australian? Is anyone connecting the dots from “A” to “Z”?