Social Media Links Tesla to Rebuilding Puerto Rico After Irma

Twitter facilitated a potential power deal between Tesla and Puerto Rico. This deal, if finalized, would allow the world to see the scalability of Tesla’s power solutions.

About 1 million Puerto Rican’s have been left without power following the devastating effects of Hurricane Irma. In the wake of this tragedy, lots of people have been trying to propose a viable solution for the power situation.

However, it was one Scott Stapf’s tweet that sparked a chain of events that has led to this potential solution. He asked if the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk could salvage the power situation in Puerto Rico.

We believe he asked this question because Elon Musk earlier this year offered to build a battery power plant for South Australia within 100 days or get paid nothing.

Elon’s response to Scott led to a Twitter conversation between himself and Ricardo Rossello, the governor of Puerto Rico in what appears to be a plea for help to rebuild the power grid in the hurricane-stricken island.

The two ultimately decided to follow things up in a call.

Reactions

The response to the dire situation has been criticized by the island community and by the media. Some might point to this as an example of private companies setting up where the public sector falls short…something we may see more of as governments around the world continue to struggle to come up with the resources to mitigate crisis situations of all kind.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes we don’t let go of things until we have to. Innovation rarely comes without a challenge. Destructive events like a natural disaster bring suffering in the short term, and the victims are in our thoughts. The positive side is that these events also present an opportunity for us to rebuild in a better, more resilient and efficient way for the long term.

What happened in the aftermath of the hurricane(s) is terrible, but there is a silver lining in the storm clouds: we can use next-technologies to not only make our communities stronger for impending natural disasters in the future but also more efficient in general.

When do you think Tesla can pull off a revolutionary power solution that’ll forever change how power plants are built in future?