- Hurricanes Irma and Maria have devastated Puerto Rico.
Elon Musk offered to help, and in a few short weeks,
they've already installed a new sustainable energy system
for Hospital del Niño, in San Juan,
that's the Children's Hospital,
Elon called this "The first of many solar
and battery projects going live in Puerto Rico."
This really got me thinking,
what if we could completely rebuild their infrastructure
using something more sustainable?
How many batteries and solar panels would it take
and would it last, would it even work?
Hi, I'm Ben Sullins with Teslanomics
and today we're going to take a look
at what it would actually take
to completely switch from what Puerto Rico had,
which was a pretty dirty grid,
that was really falling apart,
to something much more sustainable and longer lasting.
First, let's remember how we got here,
on Wednesday, September 20th, Hurricane Maria
hit Puerto Rico with 155 mile per hour winds,
that's about 250 kilometers per hour
and feet of rain pouring down,
leaving 3.4 million Americans without power.
Maria was technically a Category 4 storm,
but came in just on the heels
of the most powerful hurricane
in recorded history, Hurricane Irma,
Hurricane Irma wasn't the direct hit
to the US Territory that Maria was,
however, it left nearly one million people
without power for almost two weeks.
When Maria struck, it didn't skirt around the island
like hurricanes often do with Puerto Rico,
it cut straight across the middle of it,
making things worse,
the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA,
had recently declared bankruptcy
and had lost about 30% of their workforce since 2012.
Aging infrastructure across the island
made the grid more susceptible to damage from the storm,
with the median age of the PREPA power plants
around 44 years.
Inadequate safety also plagued the company,
and local newspapers frequently described
poor maintenance and outdated controls.
All of these factors combined in the worst possible way
for the 3.4 million Americans living on the island,
resulting in 100% power failure.
Phone lines went down,
generators kicked in, until they ran out of diesel,
and everyone did what they could to survive.
Even now, weeks after the disaster,
many residents in Puerto Rico are still without power
and it isn't looking like that's gonna change anytime soon,
so while all the devastation and damage,
that Puerto Rico's incurred is an obvious tragedy,
they do have an opportunity here to turn things around
and help prevent this from happening again in the future.
Tesla can make this happen for Puerto Rico,
and they already are, as I mentioned,
the question is, how much would it take
and how long before they would
actually be back up and running?
I mean, there are literally tons of people,
that are still without power,
so it's something that we need to get working on right away.
The good news is, Tesla's done this before,
first in Ta'u, American Samoa and in Kauai, Hawaii,
let's take a look at those cases
and see if they tell us anything informative
about what we could do for Puerto Rico.
In November 2016, Tesla unveiled a project
it completed in Ta'u, American Samoa,
their report stated the island of Ta'u in American Samoa,
located more than 4,000 miles
from the west coast of the United States,
now hosts a solar power and battery
storage enabled micro grid,
that can supply nearly 100% of the island's
power needs from renewable energy,
this provides a cost saving alternative to diesel,
removing the hazards of power intermittency
and making outages a thing of the past.
Now the island of Ta'u is tiny, compared to Puerto Rico,
it barely has 1,000 residents, if that,
so it was a baby step, but an important one,
if Tesla's gonna be able to do this on a much larger scale,
the next step was in Kauai, the island in Hawaii,
the project in Kauai was more recent,
just this passed March of 2017
and doesn't cover the entire island,
but is a much bigger system,
like the one they would need in Puerto Rico,
in the announcement about the Kauai project,
Tesla stated, "To achieve a sustainable energy future,
"the world needs reliable, renewable energy
"around the clock."
The island of Kauai has an abundance of solar energy,
but it can only be used when the sun is shining.
Kauai burns millions of gallons of fossil fuels annually
to produce energy at night, until now,
Tesla's 52 megawatt-hour Tesla Powerpack
and 13 megawatt solar farm will store solar energy
produced during the day and deliver it to the grid
during the evening hours
to reduce the amount of fossil fuels
needed to meet energy demand.
This dispatchable solar project represents the first time
a utility contracted for a system of this scale,
that stores and delivers solar energy after sunset.
Now Tesla also just finished the world's largest
battery installation in southern Australia
with 129 megawatt-hour Powerpack,
it's a bunch of Powerpacks networked together,
but in total, 129 megawatt-hours,
which is about double the size of the project in Kauai,
so things are growing rapidly
and really there isn't a limit to how this can scale,
the physics of it don't really limit us in any way,
so we can literally just keep adding batteries and solar,
until all of our energy needs are met,
but I thought now would be a good time to take a look
and see what it would actually take,
considering how big Puerto Rico is,
compared to these other projects.
For this analysis, the important part to consider
is the size of the battery backup,
while solar is a great option for Puerto Rico,
which averages 8.6 hours of sunshine per day,
to obtain 100% of their energy from renewable sources,
they would likely need to explore other options,
such as off shore wind, so if we start by looking
at the Ta'u system in American Samoa,
Tesla installed a six megawatt-hour backup battery
with enough energy to last for about three days
for their 800 residents,
in Kauai, Tesla installed a 52 megawatt-hour storage system
for the 65,000 residents of the island,
so a pretty big jump from the previous system in Ta'u,
but still small in comparison
to what they'll need for Puerto Rico,
if we include the system in southern Australia,
we see that again, Tesla made a big leap,
going from 52 megawatt-hours to 129 megawatt-hours,
creating the world's largest lithium ion battery,
that will provide power to
the over 30,000 residents in South Australia.
In calculating the amount of energy
Puerto Rico would need to go 100% renewable,
I looked at their current energy output,
which is substantially larger than our previous examples.
Puerto Rico's electricity generation
is mostly fueled by petroleum and natural gas,
in 2016 these fuels made up 47 and 34% respectively
of the territory's net generation,
in 2016, coal made up about 17%
of Puerto Rico's electricity generation
and renewables provided the remaining 2%.
Puerto Rico has 3.4 million residents
and is substantially larger than our other examples,
so if we extrapolate from what they did
for those other places,
Tesla would need to build a battery system
close to 5,000 megawatt-hours or five gigawatt-hours,
this is using data from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory report from March of 2015
on the energy consumption in Puerto Rico.
This may look like a huge jump and it is, honestly,
but it is also totally doable
and it wouldn't need to be done with a single installation,
instead Tesla could install many smaller battery systems
across the island to build a more resilient system,
similar to how grids typically have decentralized options,
eliminating any single point of failure for the system,
this is in contrast to how the PREPA system was designed,
where the single transmission line
from the south to the north was cut,
leaving essentially 100% of people without power.
So it is possible and you may be thinking
this is all well and good, but wouldn't a hurricane
just destroy all this stuff anyways?
Well, not exactly, batteries could easily be stored
underground or in buildings made to withstand
even the toughest hurricane,
so that's a pretty obvious solution,
for solar panels, they need to be exposed to the sun,
so they're in a bit different predicament,
now most panels that are installed now
are certified to withstand winds up to 140 miles per hour,
which is about 225 kilometers per hour,
for example, during Hurricane Sandy,
New Jersey was hit especially hard,
New Jersey also has one of the highest
solar panel capacities in the United States,
in the second quarter of 2012,
just before the hurricane hit,
the state had installed 103 megawatts
of photovoltaic capacity,
analysis after Sandy hit revealed little to no damage
of the photovoltaic system from the storm,
according to a spokesperson for a solar system
installer servicing over 200 customers
in a region of New Jersey hit hardest,
a few metal casings covering wires
from the panels were damaged by flooding
and one very large system had two panels come loose.
Hurricane Maria was much bigger
and more powerful than Sandy was,
when Maria made landfall in early September 20th,
it brought with it winds upwards of 155 miles per hour,
which is about 250 kilometers per hour,
this is well above the rating of most solar panels.
As Hurricane Maria cut across Puerto Rico,
it left in its wake massive destruction,
the thing about hurricanes is though,
that they weaken as they spread across land,
so while coastal towns with solar panels
would likely suffer significant damage,
because of the high winds,
in the capital, San Juan, the winds from Maria
only reached about 113 miles per hour,
which is about 181 kilometers per hour,
well below the rating of most panels,
now while some of the panels
may have become damaged from the wind or flooding,
it's unlikely that all or even a significant amount of them
would have been disabled from the storm,
once the hurricane passed,
the panels would have begun to generate electricity again
and assuming the transmission lines were buried
and the battery systems were in protected areas,
the power may not have even went out
and Puerto Rico would be in a much better place,
than it is right now.
All said and done, it is doable
and the technology exists and works fine,
but you probably wouldn't do 100% solar,
considering you have lots of different options
available to you, such as offshore wind,
maybe tidal energy in the future, so more likely
it makes sense to have a mix of renewable generation
and then lots of different batteries
spread across the island with different transmission lines,
so you don't have a single point of failure.
As Vox recently reported, refashioning Puerto Rico's grid
is not a question of technology,
rather the dire state of the territory's finances
pose a significant obstacle
to new investment in its energy infrastructure.
Ultimately building a greener, more resilient,
independent grid rests on whether there is enough money
and political will to see the vision through,
so unfortunately the question is if, rather than how.
The good news is that lots of companies
are positioning themselves to help
and billionaire philanthropists, such as Richard Branson
are getting into the mix by setting up green funds
to help rebuild the grid in the Caribbean,
using renewable technology.
As I've said before, if you have the ability
to help out with Puerto Rico, please do so,
this is a serious humanitarian crisis,
where millions of Americans need our help
to really get through this
and hopefully we can make this a story of redemption
on how they rebuild in a way
that is much more sustainable and renewable for the future
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