Miracle in Puerto Rico;
It looks like something out a brochure advertising what renewable energy could offer a remote, storm-ravaged island.
Electrical lines still hang perilously from poles across the street, but inside the mint-green, one-story Ciudad Dorada senior center, fans blow cool air and refrigerators stocked with insulin and other medicines run cold even as the noon sun broils in a cloudless Caribbean sky. On its roof are a set of Tesla photovoltaic solar panels, attached via cable to a pair of Tesla batteries hitched to the wall beneath.
And yet, a diesel generator growls on full blast behind the center.
Workers from Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car and solar energy giant, arrived on Vieques just weeks after hurricanes Irma and María crippled the aging electrical grid and severed the transmission cable that connected this island to the Puerto Rico mainland seven miles west. The company selected the senior center as one of 11 sites on the darkened island that it would equip with power-producing panels and batteries.
Constructing the system was simple. But when workers attached the panels and batteries to the old electrical wiring in the former schoolhouse, the batteries blew out.
“It doesn’t work,” a nurse at the senior center said in Spanish during a HuffPost visit in late February. “It never has.”
Via @MarkBSpiegel — “In other words, Musk was about as useful to Puerto Rico as he was to the kids trapped in the cave… With Fraud-Boy, it’s all about grabbing fraudulent headlines.”
Ah Vieques. The little slice of America that became nothing when they let the leftists run the Navy out.
The economic collapse of this now one horse island is complete.
I would like to know more about what happened during the installation. While I agree that large scale solar is not a practical solution, this application actually makes sense. I work in the backup energy industry, and because I can get the materials cheap and do my own installing, I added a solar and battery system to my house. It powers my air conditioning during the day, and works well. But it is not economically viable at today’s prices.
The other reason that details about the installation interest me is because my company sells frequently to the Caribbean islands, and those customers give us the biggest headaches because they don’t understand the equipment. It is not unusual for customers to miswire their equipment and destroy it. My guess is that something similar happened to the Tesla installation.
Throw it all out in the recycling bin. It is no good.
Natural gas is well, natural. Use it. There’s lots.
Quite so; I was reading the article hoping to get some technical info but got nothing. It’s Hufpo after all. The take-away here is that the enviro energy “industry” is full of hucksters, conmen and ideologues.
Question for ya ROBERT F.
“… added a solar and battery system to my house. It powers my air conditioning during the day, and works well…
Most interesting. I am going to suspect you have at least a 6+Kw Array, 4-5Kw Inverter & at least 12 – 2 Volt Large deep cycles…..and a 4500W Backup Generator – that kind of Air condioning takes some power… and to power it soley with Solar also takes a shit ton of money. Why “only” your air conditioning..?
My teeney little 13,500W unit on my RV would’t even burp if I had my 400 W of solar panels or my 4 Trojan T-105’s (6V), directed to it. The only things that will run this little unit is shore power or my 3kw genny.
http://www.beginningfromthismorning.com/
This guy made it work. Check out one of his instagram posts where he indicates he ran his airconditioner all day in hot Phoenix sun off his solar array.His battery bank is also the battery system from a Nissan Leaf.
How about we keep working with the tried and true and inexpensive and research other modes, until such research finds or proves that another source of energy is truly viable. Instead we are wasting billions screwing around with solar and wind power, both of which require massive fossil fuel inputs and manufacturing costs that exceed their value. There should be no subsidies for such wasteful actions. We are littering the skyline with wind turbines and filling fields with heat island solar panels, we are really not very bright.
No question OWG. I was in Old Palm Springs back in 2004 (at the time I didnt even know there was an “old” and New….anyway.
Their Entire slyline from horizon to horizon was littered with 30 years of junk Turbines – hundreds of them, most of which were not running and looked BEAT. No wind at any time I was there…a disgusting tax payer subsidized JOKE, as is Wind wherever they put it..only exception I know of might be Pincer Creek, Ab where they simply NEVER Stop.
If “they” want CLEAN – Give em NUCLEAR. If not, don’t renew “their” drivers licenses.
Do you hear me Jason Kenney..??
One more time:
Mr. Musk is nothing more than the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum, but with more money and less ethics.
Have you not seen the video of Space X landing two boosters at the same time, next to each other at Cape Canaveral ?
Oh, and a third one, on a barge far out at sea a bit later ?
It’s another of Musk’s crazy ideas. It’s also one of the greatest achievements by humans since the landing on the moon.
Yes, Elon does spend too much time on the loony side of the genius/crazy line. I would not recommend investing in his scams.
Few people accomplish historic acts without failure along the way. He’s at least trying – someday he may have another success ?
Mark, at least PT provided entertainment for the money.
musk, well, lOOks like one of the stars of ‘American Greed’, a play-by-play handbook how to scam big time.
the big difference is musk just hasnt been outed yet. is tesla a variation on the ponzi scheme?
what’s the stock price for tesla? is it going to have its very own black friday some day?
will that take a host of related stocks with it?
An electrician from the SAIT could show them how its done.
Of course they need “scientists” to tinker with relatively simple electrical situation,
This is apart from the genius who thought up the idea,
Let me know when Poilievre asks climate girl about it in the HOC.
I’m a climate girl, in a warming world
I fly first class, there’s no riff raff
You can brush my hair, carbon tax me everywhere
Imagination, pollutions my creation
Does anyone know what subsidy is available from climate girl for installation of a Tesla wall?