Puerto Rico suffers second whole island blackout

[SMAlset]

I was aware that Puerto Rico had suffered a whole island black out last week when a tree fell on some power lines and then read today about another whole island blackout due to some construction equipment. No mention of Telsa's efforts and it had me wondering how those Tesla Powerwall and Powerpacks were doing. Found this InsideEvs article that reported all is well and good. Nice.

Tesla Batteries Supply Electricity To Blacked-Out Puerto Rico

 

[SMAlset]

Sadly not wide coverage to be found on how the powerwalls/powerpacks held up. Did find coverage from FOX Business: Elon Musk: Tesla ‘delivering power’ in Puerto Rico amid blackout and just saw a segment on local FOX Channel 2 San Francisco Bay TV (KTVU) on how Tesla's efforts have provided some sustained power down in Puerto Rico. Wired magazine had this story that included Tesla's efforts to configure microgrids in Puerto Rico: Why Can't We Fix Puerto Rico's Power Grid?

Electrek and Teslarati's had the most coverage of Tesla's battery efforts but given that they are EV-centric publications not surprising.
Tesla Powerwalls and Powerpacks keep the lights on at 662 locations in Puerto Rico during island-wide blackout, says Elon Musk
Elon Musk pushes more Tesla battery installs as blackout hits Puerto Rico

One of the most comprehensive mainstream news stories I've come across recently on how companies like Tesla and Sonnen are influencing power systems in places like Puerto Rico and elsewhere is this 4/12/18 Business Insider article from their "Saving Our World" section: The way Americans get electricity is one natural disaster away from decimation — but a resilient power grid is in our reach

 

[Jeff Hudson]

One of the most comprehensive mainstream news stories I've come across recently on how companies like Tesla and Sonnen are influencing power systems in places like Puerto Rico and elsewhere is this 4/12/18 Business Insider article from their "Saving Our World" section: The way Americans get electricity is one natural disaster away from decimation — but a resilient power grid is in our reach

Thanks for that Business Insider article link. It was very interesting as well as up to date.

 

[Joelgjr]

They’re talking about batteries but why not talking equally about solar? Batteries are worthless without a means to charge them. I’m assuming they are in fact using solar to charge them but the article basically leaves that whole part out.

Obviously they’re not charging on the grid because that’s down. Generators don’t make sense because the Tesla Powerwall 2 users manual indicates they cannot be charged from generators yet.

So is it solar? Wind? Are they shipping them charged like a giant Duracell and then just depleting them (lol)

 

[SMAlset]

They’re talking about batteries but why not talking equally about solar? Batteries are worthless without a means to charge them. I’m assuming they are in fact using solar to charge them but the article basically leaves that whole part out.

Obviously they’re not charging on the grid because that’s down. Generators don’t make sense because the Tesla Powerwall 2 users manual indicates they cannot be charged from generators yet.

So is it solar? Wind? Are they shipping them charged like a giant Duracell and then just depleting them (lol)

Huh? And solar and wind without a battery source doesn't do anything for power outages if the energy can't be captured. We've had wind and solar feed into the grid for a while now but until recently no battery storage solutions that made sense. It's been the missing piece. Two of the articles I linked to showed photos of solar farms and wind farms. I assume you haven't been following any of the Tesla energy articles over the past year or so when projects have gone in? In Puerto Rico I know they installed solar panels, one of Australia's installations is charged by wind.

They establish microgrids if you read the last article so they can still use the solar to feed into the battery. In Austraila for example when the power plant went out the powerpacks kept the power on and the wind during the day continues to charge the powerpacks. Here's another project Tesla is working on with the Australian Government: Tesla is helping South Australia build what will be the world’s largest virtual power plant

Nothing to do with the blackout in Puerto Rico but did you see this article? Tesla Powerpacks power up new microgrid to stop outages in town in the Philippines

 

[Joelgjr]

I was talking about the original article only. I didn’t read your articles. My mistake.

 

[dknieriemen]

Why can't they be charged from a generator? If I can charge my Model S from my home, that has a backup generator, why can't I charge a powerwall that is in my home? That way the generator does not have to run all the time.

 

[miimura]

Why can't they be charged from a generator? If I can charge my Model S from my home, that has a backup generator, why can't I charge a powerwall that is in my home? That way the generator does not have to run all the time.

Generator Integration | Tesla

 

[Icebox_inel]

Puerto Rico group

Log into Facebook | Facebook

 

[Sylvia Else]

Why can't they be charged from a generator?

I dare say they'll get to it one day, but it's not entirely trivial. In normal use, as the house loads vary, the generator has to change its throttle settings to accomodate this. If there's a battery there too, the battery needs to adjust the load it represents so that the sum of the house loads and the battery load does not exceed the generator capacity. So now there are two things trying to respond to changes in the house load, which can be a recipe for trouble. Tesla would have to do a fair amount of work to test their implementation with various models of generator to make sure that, for example, they didn't keep causing the generator to trip from brief overloads. It's probably not their highest priority at the moment.