Tesla’s 100 Days To Fix SA’s Power Actually Started Last Friday

Remember when Elon Musk gave South Australia a “100 days or your money back” guarantee that he could fix the state’s power issues? Well, it turns out that 100 days only started… three days ago. And the battery’s already half-built, so Tesla has a definite early lead in its 100-day countdown.

The grid interconnection agreement, approved by Australia’s energy regulator AEMO, was signed by SA energy transmission company Electranet on Friday afternoon — and it’s that signing that kicks off Musk’s countdown, the promise he made in a casual tweet to entrepreneur and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Tesla and the French company Neoen responsible for the battery installation at the 99-turbine, 315MW Hornsdale Wind Farm have until January 7 to complete the project; in reality, South Australia’s power demand starts to rise in mid-November continuing until mid-March, so the earlier the project is completed the better SA’s power situation will be.

Bloomberg reported from an event commemorating the signing that Musk said half the battery capacity was already in place, meaning that barring any catastrophes the company should easily be able to complete it in time for the January 7 deadline. The event, by the way, was powered entirely from the installed Powerpacks.

Musk was ebullient on the progress made in two months: “You can’t even remodel your kitchen in that amount of time. It serves as a great example to the rest of the world of what can be done.”