A $50 million bet between a tech giant and an enterprise software company came to fruition on Saturday as Elon Musk announced that the new South Australian mega-battery is ready to be powered up.
South Australia has been plagued with rolling blackouts for the past year and a half, and Tesla’s energy products vice president Lyndon Rive offered a solution.
Mr Rive claimed in a March interview with the Financial Review that the company’s batteries could fix the problem within 100 days.
Tesla’s energy products VP Lyndon Rive said he could solve South Australia’s energy problems
Mr Cannon-Brookes asked Elon Musk and Lyndon Rive to ‘guarantee’ a battery within 100 days
Mr Cannon-Brookes (right) challenged Tesla boss Elon Musk (left) and Tesla’s energy products vice president Lyndon Rive to solve the South Australian blackout problem within 100 days
The seemingly wild claim prompted Atlassin co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes to ask Mr Rive if he could guarantee the installation of a 100MW battery pack in a hundred days.
Mr Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, vowed to meet the challenge with the Tesla Powerwall 2 Battery or do it for ‘free’.
Mr Musk had stated in a previous interview with Business Insider that if he failed to meet the deadline, it would have cost him ‘probably $50 million or more’.
Eight months later, Mr Cannon-Brookes tweeted that he has ‘never been more happy to lose a bet’ upon hearing the news that Tesla’s Aussie team would be ready to install the facility within the 100-day deadline.
Telsa’s Australian battery team met the 100-day deadline for the battery with six days to spare
‘Never been more happy to lose a bet,’ the Australian entrepreneur tweeted on November 24
‘Thank you Elon Musk, Tesla’s amazing Aussie team, @jayweatherill & all SA. Never been more happy to lose a bet,’ the Australian entrepreneur tweeted following news that testing is due to begin.
The battery will serve as a back-up power system capable of powering 60,000 homes for more than four hours and is reportedly three times more powerful than anything else on earth, according to ABC.
Tesla Powerwall 2 Battery is reportedly three times more powerful than anything else on earth
The battery will serve as a back-up power system capable of powering 2,500 homes for a day
Powerpacks from the Tesla battery will be connected to the 99-turbine Hornsdale wind farm run by French company Neoen, have been fully installed on the site near Jamestown, north of Adelaide, at a cost of approximately $33 million.
Adelaide Now reported on Saturday that the enormous lithium-iron battery is expected to be ready to provide power to the state from December 1.
Premier Jay Weatherill has announced that he will travel to Jamestown next week to officially launch the battery, which will also store power for use by the state government to put into the electricity grid.
The battery will form part of a $550 million plan to ‘provide backup power and affordable energy to South Australians during the summer months’,Fortune reported.
South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill will travel to Jamestown to officially launch the battery
The battery will also store power for use by the state government to put into the electricity grid