Energy
Could Tesla really rebuild Puerto Rico’s grid with batteries and solar?
Puerto Rico remains largely without electricity after hurricane Maria ripped through the island and destroyed much of its electricity grid. With rebuilding efforts underway from both non-profits and governmental aid, the U.S. territory has been able to reactivate just over 12% of the electricity grid and expects 25% of the grid to be online in the next month. Reconstruction of transmission lines and electrical infrastructure is expected to cost upwards of $5 billion, according to Ricardo Ramos, chief executive of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority. With a public utility service that’s strapped in massive debt and linked to a bankruptcy filing in July, major funding for the crucial project to rebuild remains largely unknown.
Concept image of Tesla’s scalable battery storage solutions (Photo: Tesla)
While the U.S. government has failed to help restore power on the island, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is up for the challenge. In response to a question that asked if the billionaire entrepreneur would be able to restore power to Puerto Rico using independent solar and battery systems, Musk said, “The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.”
This caught the eye of Puerto Rico Governor, Ricardo Rossello, who suggested that the island could become Tesla Energy’s flagship project.
With 3.4 million residents on the island that use roughly 19 billion kWh of energy per year (19 million MWh), or an average of 5,310 kWh (5.2 MWh) per capita, building a Tesla solar and battery solution to meet some of the island’s needs will easily exceed the complexity and cost of Tesla’s existing massive battery project in Australia.
The Tesla Solution
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Puerto Rico consumes 19 billion kWh of electricity per year with 96.4% of it being produced by fossil fuel generators. The other 3.6% is from renewable energy sources.
For the sake of coming up with some hypotheticals, let’s assume that Puerto Rico transitions at least 40% of its power generation to solar energy. To meet that goal, Tesla would need to install a 4,164 MW solar system (factoring in available sun hours), or roughly 5.2% of total global solar deployments in 2017, which is about 320 times larger than the solar plant that Tesla built in Kauai.
Tesla’s Solar and Battery project in Kauai
While it’s difficult to calculate the exact cost of a project of this caliber, we can still make some general estimates that are based on comparable projects and standard rates. In Q3 2016 SolarCity reported that its installation costs, excluding marketing and general administrative costs, were approximately $2 per watt-hour. Based on this assumption, a solar system for Puerto Rico could cost upwards of $8.32 billion.
Tesla would also be installing batteries to help balance the solar power generation and stabilize the grid. A Tesla battery storage solution in Puerto Rico of this size would far exceed the company’s existing “world’s largest lithium-ion battery” project in South Australia. Tesla would likely need a 5,000 MWh (5,000,000 kWh) battery system to support the installed solar.
Musk had previously said that projects over 100 MWh can expect a price of $250 per kWh. For a project of this size, Puerto Rico would be buying $1.25B worth of batteries from Tesla.
To put the size of the project in perspective, it’s worth noting that Tesla’s solar division (formally SolarCity) installed nearly 900 MWh of solar in 2016 and nearly 2,400 MWh over its history. The company is also expanding both solar and battery production at Gigafactory 1 and 2, both of which will help reduce costs over time as economies of scale are realized.
The real cost…
While projects as large as a proposed Tesla solution in Puerto Rico may seem incredibly expensive at first, it’s important to look at them with the right lens. Right now, households in the region pay $.198 per kWh, over 50% higher than the US average.
The total cost of solar and batteries would be $9.58B and would supply 40% of the island’s energy for decades. With Puerto Rico’s poor credit rating and high debt, financing this project won’t come easy, nor cheap. Factoring in a presumed 7% interest rate and the total project cost would exceed $21B over 20 years. In exchange, households would see a price drop in cost per kilowatt-hour to around $.112, as Puerto Rico transitions to a cleaner energy source with a more stable grid.
This project would clearly require a substantial investment in money and labor, something Musk doubters would find too large of scale for the company to tackle. But then again, when compared to building a network of massive rockets that would transport people across the world and eventually to Mars, a large-scale battery and solar system doesn’t seem all that difficult.
In a notable intersection of Big Tech powerhouses, Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, has partnered with Canadian energy infrastructure giant Enbridge on a significant renewable energy initiative that will rely on battery technology from Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The project, which was announced this week, marks another step in Meta’s aggressive push to power its expanding data center operations with clean energy, dispelling many of the complaints people have about them.
This new development is located near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and will feature a 365-megawatt (MW) solar farm paired with a 200 MW/1,600 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system, also known as BESS. Tesla is providing the batteries for the project, valued at roughly $200 million.
The story was originally reported by Utility Dive.
This Wyoming project represents the first phase of Enbridge and Meta’s joint “Cowboy Project.” Once operational, it will deliver power to Meta’s regional data centers through Cheyenne Light, Fuel, and Power under Wyoming’s Large Power Contract Service tariff.
This tariff, originally developed in collaboration with Microsoft and Black Hills Energy, is designed specifically for large loads like data centers. It ensures that the renewable supply serves hyperscale customers without impacting retail electricity rates for other users.
The battery system will operate under a long-term tolling agreement, providing dispatchable capacity that enhances grid reliability. During periods of high demand, the utility can access the backup generation, addressing one of the key challenges of integrating large-scale renewables with the explosive growth of data center electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence.
This latest collaboration builds on prior joint efforts between Enbridge and Meta in Texas, including the 600 MW Clear Fork Solar, 152 MW Easter Wind, and 300 MW Cone Wind projects. Together with the Wyoming initiative, the companies have now partnered on roughly 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of combined solar, wind, and storage capacity.
The deal highlights the intensifying demand for reliable, low-carbon power from technology giants. Meta has committed to supporting its data center growth with renewable energy, joining peers like Microsoft and Google in seeking large-scale solutions. Enbridge’s Allen Capps described the project as “one of the larger utility-scale battery installations supporting U.S. data center operations and growth.”
The involvement of Tesla’s battery technology adds an intriguing layer, linking two of the world’s most prominent tech leaders—Zuckerberg and Musk—in the clean energy transition.
As data centers continue to drive unprecedented electricity load growth across the United States, projects like this one illustrate how hyperscalers are turning to strategic partnerships with traditional energy players and innovative storage solutions to meet both sustainability goals and reliability needs.
Elon Musk
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.
SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.
The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.
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Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.
For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.
The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.
The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.
Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.
Elon Musk
Tesla Supercharger for Business exposes jaw-dropping ROI gap between best and worst locations
Tesla’s new Supercharger for Business calculator reveals an eye-opening all-in cost and location-based ROI projections.
Tesla has launched an online calculator for its Supercharger for Business program, giving property owners their first transparent look at what it really costs to install Superchargers on site and what kind of return they can expect.
The program itself launched in September 2025, allowing businesses to purchase and operate Supercharger hardware on their own property while Tesla handles installation, maintenance, software, and 24/7 driver support. As Teslarati reported at launch, hosts also get their logo placed on the chargers and their location integrated into Tesla’s in-car navigation, meaning drivers are actively routed there. The stalls are open to all EVs, not just Teslas.
We launched Supercharger for Business in 2025 to help companies get charging right. We found simplicity and transparency to be a problem in this industry.
We’re now sharing pricing and a financial calculator to help make informed decisions. The goal is to accelerate investments,…
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) April 8, 2026
The new online calculator, announced by Tesla on Wednesday with the note that “simplicity and transparency” have been a problem in the industry, lets any business enter a U.S. address and get a real cost and revenue model. A standard 8-stall V4 Supercharger site runs approximately $500,000 in hardware and $55,000 per post for installation, bringing an all-in price just shy of $1 million. Tesla charges a flat $0.10 per kWh fee to cover software, billing, and network operations. Businesses set their own retail price and keep the margin above that fee.
Taking a look at Tesla’s Supercharger for Business online calculator, we can see that ROI is not uniform, and the gap between a strong location and a poor one can stretch the breakeven point by several years.
The biggest driver is foot traffic and how long people stay. A busy rest station, hotel, or outlet mall brings in repeat visitors who need to charge while they’re already stopped, pushing utilization numbers higher and shortening payback time.
Tesla Supercharger for Business ROI calculator
Local electricity rates matter just as much on the cost side. Markets like California carry some of the highest commercial electricity rates in the country, which eats into the margin between what a host pays per kWh and what they charge drivers. At the same time, dense urban areas with high EV adoption tend to support higher retail charging prices, which can offset that cost if demand is strong enough. Weather also plays a role. Cold climates reduce battery efficiency and increase charging frequency, but they can also suppress utilization in winter months if drivers avoid stopping in exposed outdoor locations. Suburban and rural sites face a different problem: lower baseline EV traffic, which means a site with cheaper power and lower operating costs can still take longer to pay back simply because the stalls sit idle more often. Tesla’s calculator uses real fleet data to pre-fill utilization estimates by ZIP code, so businesses can run their specific address against these variables rather than relying on averages.
The program has seen real adoption. Wawa, already the largest host of Tesla Superchargers with over 2,100 stalls across 223 locations, opened its first fully owned and branded site in Alachua, Florida earlier this year. Francis Energy of Oklahoma and the city of Alpharetta, Georgia have also deployed branded stations through the program, as Teslarati covered in January.
Tesla now exceeds 80,000 Supercharger stalls worldwide, and the calculator makes the economic case for accelerating that number through private investment rather than company-owned sites alone.
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