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Weeks after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico remains in desperate straits. The island–which is an American territory and whose citizens are total citizens of the United States according to both Supreme Court rulings and acts of Congress–is even so about entirely without power. Virtually every attribute of disaster recovery, from medical treatment to dwelling reconstruction, either requires or is fabricated orders of magnitude easier past electricity. And Maria didn't just wreck Puerto Rico'south generating stations; it destroyed the entire transmission grid.

Elon Musk has now offered to help Puerto Rico out, possibly by deploying solar power around the island. Puerto Rico is ideally situated for solar power in many respects. It's relatively close to the equator–closer than any location in the continental Usa–and it enjoys high amounts of sunshine for most of the twelvemonth. Musk's company, SolarCity, has been absorbed by Tesla and has been looking for means to calibration its battery projects to more customers. Puerto Rico, with its three.5 one thousand thousand inhabitants, would be an enormous lift for Tesla, peradventure more than the company can really handle at this point. Tesla's like efforts in American Samoa extended solar power and battery storage to an island with roughly 1,000 inhabitants. Puerto Rico has a population more than 1,000 times larger.

MuskTweet

This wouldn't be the commencement fourth dimension that Musk has raised an idea on Twitter and then carried information technology out as a long-term project; as The Verge notes, a Twitter bet betwixt Musk and an Aussie software developer resulted in plans for what will be the world's largest lithium-ion bombardment when the station is finished. And there could be other benefits also.

Historically, Puerto Rico has faced the second-highest electrical costs of any US land save Hawaii and its power grid was never in particularly adept shape. Before Maria, Puerto Rico'due south power was generated past petroleum (47 percent), natural gas (34 percent), coal (17 percent), and renewable ability (2 percent). The island no reserves of whatever fossil fuel, which means all of its conventional energy requirements must be carried past freighter. The island used to refine some of its own petroleum, but that practice ceased with the concluding refinery shutdown in 2009.

Edifice a ability grid for the island that would cut its reliance on imported fossil fuels would be a major improvement, simply information technology'd also be extremely expensive. There'due south a great bargain of work to do to hammer out whatsoever concrete proposals, and information technology'south not yet clear what kind of funding will be available. Puerto Rico'due south economic system was in terrible shape before Maria, with a debt load of over $70 billion dollars. Now the island's situation is fifty-fifty worse, and as however, we have no information on how or what Congress volition practise to help the territory–whose citizens are as American as any Texan or Floridian–recover their feet. The US government helped fund Musk's previous work in American Samoa, but whether it will extend such support to the ravaged island of Puerto Rico is anyone's guess.

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