Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

That is very arogant, even if I believe he could do it. Australian power issues are endemic to the regions unique requirements, and born out of long term political and economic policy discussions.

I am honestly surprised that someone as smart as Elon wouldn't recognise both the crassness of a comment like that, and that he likely doesn't fully understand the political landscape that caused the situation.

Good luck getting through the red tape and border crossing negotiations. To say nothing of the near 50 degree weather beating down on old infrastructre that spans thousands of very sparse kilometers.

Edit: to clarify, it is arogant because he is stirring an already controversial pot in a country that is frankly none of his business. I am from the state that is enduring the power troubles, and the technology in use is not the core of the issue, it is the artificial market policies dictating the generation of power. Having batteries wouldn't solve that, as having people to pay for the energy generation is the mechanism that is actually broken.

One possibility is that he realizes he won't be taken up on the offer, which also means that there's no chance he'll be tested on it. In the meantime, free publicity. His comment is on most major news channels today.

Indeed, Musk is a showman. Early in spacex they put a falcon 1 on a trailer and drove it to Washington, D.C. Essentially a privately funded and built ballistic missile, on a trailer, in front of the capital building. That turned some heads. This was before it flew so 2002 or 2003.

For more on that story, see http://www.thespacereview.com/article/70/1 (article has two pages, link to the second at the very bottom)

>The second stage of the Falcon 5 will be similar to the Falcon 1, and the Falcon 5 will sport a larger payload fairing, three meters in diameter. Like the Falcon 1, the Falcon 5’s first stage is designed to be recoverable, and hopefully reusable.

Truly amazing how far we have come from the era described in that article. Now, we're on the aphelion .. indeed, Musk has landed his rockets safely, successfully now.

/back-on-topic:

I think Musk might have something with the e-shingle concept, in the Australian market. All he'd have to do is open-source the thing, and provide some capital incentives to build a few fabricators in the Australian deserts, closer to the source of the materials needed..

Maybe he's suffering from Acute Musk Fever. He started slow and steady (spacex, tesla) but since a few monthes he keeps pushing new projects out like cakes (solar tiles, solar walls, mainstream mass space travel, hyperloop, boring...).

I'm from SA too, and as I said elsewhere: This would solve SA's problem completely.

There are no "border crossing negotiations": it's just the SA government. That could be a problem, but they are motivated to find a solution.

50 degrees isn't a huge problem. Tesla has a similar system in California in similar climate.

artificial market policies dictating the generation of power - unclear what you mean by that. Gas plants aren't economic because we've sold all our gas in long term contracts overseas. New "clean" (ha!) coal stations are expensive investments and not particularly cheap to run either. Wind and solar works well and is cheap when it is running, but it intermittent.

Honestly reading a bit more into the proposition I would be inclined to agree. I was also a bit reactionary in my comment, the title made it seem like Elon had said unsolicited that he would solve the problems in 100 days or it's free. It looks like the exchange was more nuanced than that, my fault for not properly reading before commenting.

In regards to my comment about artificial market policies, I was referring to the way AEMO comissions electricity to be put into the grid and how private companies can refuse the request at first (but not if AEMO pay excess to force the extra generation).

That was how we had our most recent outage, AEMO requested extra energy but the private companies did not fullfil the request as it was not cost effective.

>> artificial market policies dictating the generation of power

> AEMO requested extra energy but the private companies did not fullfil the request as it was not cost effective.

I think that is a pretty good example of non-artificial market policies.

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