Entrepreneur Elon Musk has won a US$50 million bet by beating a 100-day deadline for building a giant battery to help South Australia avoid energy blackouts, officials said.
South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said that testing of the massive lithium ion battery would begin within days, ahead of the deadline of Friday next week that Musk set for himself when he signed off on the project earlier this year.
Musk had pledged to build the battery in the South Australian outback for free if it was not completed within the 100 days.
Photo: Reuters
He estimated that it would cost at least US$50 million — local authorities will now pick up the tab.
The entrepreneur behind electric carmaker Tesla Inc made the pledge in response to power woes in South Australia, which was last year hit by a state-wide blackout after severe winds from an “unprecedented” storm toppled transmission towers.
“South Australia is set to have back-up power in place this summer through the world’s largest lithium ion battery, which is set to be energized for the first time in the coming days as it enters a phase of regulatory testing,” Weatherill said in a statement on late Thursday.
Musk’s Tesla Powerpack is connected to a wind farm operated by French energy firm Neoen SAS and is expected to hold enough power for thousands of homes during periods of excess demand that could result in blackouts.
Australia is one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters, due to its heavy use of coal-fired power.
However, the nation’s proposed National Energy Guarantee program could slash investment in large-scale wind and solar projects if the government fails to boost its 2030 emissions-reduction target, a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) said.
The goal of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government to reduce emissions by 28 percent by 2030 only requires an additional 1.5 gigawatts of new large-scale renewables, according to an estimate by BNEF.
That target “could decimate large-scale wind and solar construction” while a 45 percent reduction target advocated by the opposition Labor party would “continue the current boom,” it said.
“The National Energy Guarantee could be an effective and innovative policy mechanism, but if the target is weak, it will deliver little,” BNEF’s Australian head Kobad Bhavnagri said in an email.
Turnbull’s Liberal-led coalition government was yesterday to provide information to the states in a bid to get them to back the National Energy Guarantee, which aims to bolster reliability of Australia’s faltering electricity grid.
Australia’s six states and two territories will need to approve the program for it to function properly with a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments to be held yesterday in Hobart to discuss the plan.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
From India to China to the US, automakers cannot make vehicles — not that no one wants any, but because a more than US$450 billion industry for semiconductors got blindsided. How did both sides end up here? Over the past two weeks, automakers across the world have bemoaned the shortage of chips. Germany’s Audi, owned by Volkswagen AG, would delay making some of its high-end vehicles because of what chief executive officer Markus Duesmann called a “massive” shortfall in an interview with the Financial Times. The firm has furloughed more than 10,000 workers and reined in production. That is a further blow
MOBILE SMART: The Dimensity 1200 is 22 percent better in terms of performance than its predecessor, and 25 percent more power-efficient, the handset chip designer said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday unveiled its premium 5G processors — the Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100 — as it vies for a larger slice of the world’s rapidly growing 5G smartphone market. Manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) 6-nanometer process technology, the Dimensity 1200 processor performs 22 percent better than the previous generation Dimensity 1000+ processor, and is 25 percent more power-efficient, MediaTek said. Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Realme Mobile Telecommunications (Shenzhen) Co (銳爾覓移動通信) are to be the first adopters of the latest Dimensity chips, the companies said during a virtual media briefing. Xiaomi plans to equip its first
‘BROAD RANGE’: The US Department of Commerce intends to deny a significant number of license requests for exports to Huawei, an industry association said US President Donald Trump’s administration notified Huawei Technologies Co (華為) suppliers, including chipmaker Intel Corp, that it is revoking certain licenses to sell to the Chinese company and intends to reject dozens of other applications to supply the telecommunications firm, people familiar with the matter told reporters. The action — likely the last against Huawei under Trump — is the latest in a long-running effort to weaken the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, which Washington sees as a national security threat. The notices came amid a flurry of US efforts against China in the final days of Trump’s administration. US president-elect Joe
Answering to a reported request by Germany to help address a chip shortage in its auto industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said that it was in talks with domestic chip suppliers. Foreign media over the weekend reported that German Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier had sent a request to Taipei to ask Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to cooperate more closely with German automakers to provide microchips and sensors, to bridge a shortage that has emerged over the past few months. The MOEA said that it had not yet received the request and could therefore not elaborate
RSS