{"id":32118,"date":"2016-11-22T08:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T16:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/tesla-powers-a-whole-island-with-solar-to-show-off-its-energy-chops"},"modified":"2017-06-04T09:12:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T16:12:38","slug":"tesla-powers-a-whole-island-with-solar-to-show-off-its-energy-chops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/tesla-powers-a-whole-island-with-solar-to-show-off-its-energy-chops","title":{"rendered":"Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VZjEvwrDXn0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Tesla completed its<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/11\/21\/13698314\/tesla-completes-acquisition-solarcity-elon-musk\"> $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity<\/a> this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta\u2019u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.solarcity.com\/island-in-the-sun\/\">microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries<\/a> that will supply \u201cnearly 100 percent\u201d of power needs for Ta\u2019u\u2019s 600 residents.<\/p>\n<p>The project seems intended to show off the potential benefits of the SolarCity acquisition, with Ta\u2019u\u2019s microgrid comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. But buying SolarCity remains a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/6\/22\/12003316\/elon-musk-tesla-solar-city-deal-model-3-powerwall\">risky move<\/a> for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that\u2019s far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales). Nevertheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk describes the acquisition as \u201cblindingly obvious\u201d \u2014 a necessary step in his so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/7\/20\/12242162\/tesla-elon-musk-master-plan-solarcity-autonomous\">Master Plan<\/a>\u201d to integrate clean energy generation and storage.<\/p>\n<p>The project in Ta\u2019u shows the benefit of this. It was funded by American Samoan and US authorities (including the Department of Interior), and Tesla says it will offset the island\u2019s use of more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year, as well as the expense of shipping that fuel in. Confusingly, the \u201cFactoring in the escalating cost of fuel, along with transporting such mass quantities to the small island, the financial impact is substantial,\u201d said Tesla in a blog post.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/11\/22\/13712750\/tesla-microgrid-tau-samoa\">http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/11\/22\/13712750\/tesla-microgrid-tau-samoa<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tesla completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta\u2019u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2019,45,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elon-musk","category-finance","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32118"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59703,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32118\/revisions\/59703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}