Tesla unveils ‘first of many solar+storage projects’ at hospital in Puerto Rico

While we have been talking about Puerto Rico looking at long-term solutions for its energy problems and reportedly considering Tesla’s microgrid solution, the focus is currently very much on short-term solutions.

Some medical service centers are still in urgent need of stable power as evidenced by doctors performing surgery using only light from their cell phones.

Now Tesla unveils its first solar and energy storage project at a hospital in Puerto Rico.

You would think that hospitals would receive the best emergency response with generators and fuels, but apparently, it’s not always the case. The overall emergency response has been highly criticized so far.

It’s estimated that still over 80% of Puerto Rico is without power following the devastation of their power grid left by the passage of two hurricanes last month.

Now at least one hospital, Hospital del Niño, a children’s hospital in San Juan, should be able to get stable power using Tesla’s battery+solar solution.

The company released pictures of the project on Twitter today:

It looks like we now know where the first Tesla Powerpacks spotted at the airport last week went.

Tesla had already started shipping Powerwalls, their home energy storage solution, right after the hurricanes hit, but we reported that they started shipping Powerpacks, their bigger commercial and utility-scale battery packs, last week.

We see 4 Powerpacks and a commercial inverter, which means that the system could have up to 800 kWh of energy storage capacity and it is combined with a significant solar array in the parking lot.

Eyeballing it, it looks looks like the array is 35 panels wide and about an average of 24 panels long so over 800 panels all together. Assuming 300W/ panel that’s about a 250kW setup.

It looks like they were able to get the project online rather quickly. The hospital should be able to power itself independently from the grid during the day using solar power and charge the Powerpacks with the extra energy at peak hours in order to power the hospital at night.

Tesla called it the “first of many solar+storage projects going live” in Puerto Rico.

CEO Elon Musk recently said that Tesla is delaying the unveiling of its electric truck in order to focus on sending battery packs to Puerto Rico and other islands affected by the hurricanes.