The Puerto Rico Thread

If this derail goes on I'll merely mention Milngavie, Kilncadzow and Ravenstruther.
 
The Mayor of San Juan is wearing a new message t-shirt today, and it is again for Trump.
 

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Can Elon Musk fix Puerto Rico's broken power grid?

CNN Money said:
Elon Musk is offering to solve Puerto Rico's energy crisis -- for the long haul.

Millions of Puerto Ricans are living in the dark at home after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island, knocking out its already fragile electric grid. Two weeks later, only 9% of residents have electricity, according to Puerto Rican government figures.

Musk, the CEO of electric-car maker Tesla, suggested his company's solar power unit could be a long-term solution.

"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," Musk tweeted Thursday morning, adding that the decision is up to Puerto Rican government officials...
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http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/05/news/economy/elon-musk-puerto-rico-tesla-power-grid/index.html
 
William Parcher said:
Can Elon Musk fix Puerto Rico's broken power grid?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/05/news/economy/elon-musk-puerto-rico-tesla-power-grid/index.html
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Even if he cannot, he's shown that he has a much better eye for PR and business than President Trump.

One offers a long-term solution to Puerto Rico's power problems (and maybe puts his company in a position to make a load of money ;)), the other one throws some paper towels, talks to a few rich folk and congratulates himself on what a splendid job he is doing. :rolleyes:
 
William Parcher said:
Can Elon Musk fix Puerto Rico's broken power grid?


http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/05/news/economy/elon-musk-puerto-rico-tesla-power-grid/index.html
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And good timing for him too as he now has capacity, has done some large projects , and doubled the efficiency of the commercial powerpack battery just last year.

I had looked to see if any solar customers were able to have electricity after Maria as no one seemed to report on it. Turns out, those 10,000 customers with solar panels still had to be connected to the grid for delivery, so their fate was the same. I could not find anyone truly 'off the grid'.

I think the public utility will be made functional (no choice in that, right?), then wiped out as an entity, debt included, and the island's customers can then be parceled out over time to private companies - ideally with competing efficient technologies.
 
chrispy said:
Sigh. FEMA removes statistics that don't back Trump's assertion of a great response. Sigh. This guy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...rto-rico-from-website/?utm_term=.df893417c221
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I just don't understand how more than two weeks after the storm, and only 54% of the residents can have access to drinking water, and this is considered a success. 10% have electricity. I get that the rural areas are hard to access and it might take months to get them back to normal, but most of the population is concentrated in cities. More than half are in San Juan.

I've read stories that say that General Buchanan's arrival seemed to make a difference. He's a bit more mission oriented, as one might expect from a general.
 
Meadmaker said:
I just don't understand how more than two weeks after the storm, and only 54% of the residents can have access to drinking water, and this is considered a success. 10% have electricity. I get that the rural areas are hard to access and it might take months to get them back to normal, but most of the population is concentrated in cities. More than half are in San Juan.
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I've mentioned this in the other PR thread.

Mrs. qg's home physical therapist has a son and family living in PR, and we've been getting updates on their status when she comes by twice a week.

Yesterday she told us that he had finally managed to get a generator running, and they were happy because they gotten some laundry done.

He runs a small B&B. They live about three miles north of San Juan.

They have running water. Still have no phone or Internet. He calls in to keep her informed on their status by traveling close enough to a working cell tower to get a signal.

They really miss their Internet. He'd like to try and get some of the business from relief workers needing places to stay because so few of the hotels are up and running, but he needs to be on-line to do that.
 
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Meadmaker said:
I just don't understand how more than two weeks after the storm, and only 54% of the residents can have access to drinking water, and this is considered a success. 10% have electricity. I get that the rural areas are hard to access and it might take months to get them back to normal, but most of the population is concentrated in cities. More than half are in San Juan.

I've read stories that say that General Buchanan's arrival seemed to make a difference. He's a bit more mission oriented, as one might expect from a general.
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It's considered a success because President Trump has to get an A+ at anything he is associated with, regardless of the actual result. Obviously he grades himself which makes that grade significantly more likely.

If 0.1% of people had water after 2 weeks, he'd still be declaring that it was the best response ever. :rolleyes:
 
Meadmaker said:
I just don't understand how more than two weeks after the storm, and only 54% of the residents can have access to drinking water, and this is considered a success. ...
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Not hard to understand, it's because Trump is sick in the head.
 
The Don said:
It's considered a success because President Trump has to get an A+ at anything he is associated with, regardless of the actual result. Obviously he grades himself which makes that grade significantly more likely.

If 0.1% of people had water after 2 weeks, he'd still be declaring that it was the best response ever. :rolleyes:
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This is a major problem that is only going to exacerbate future crises.

But when bad luck strikes, the president’s problems become everyone’s problems. And in Puerto Rico we’re seeing that the president’s inability to listen to constructive criticism — and his unwillingness to incentive people to give it to him — transforms misfortune into catastrophe.

This tendency to cut himself off from uncomfortable information rather than accept frank assessments and change course has impacted Trump’s legislative agenda, peripheral aspects of his foreign policy, and now a part of the United States of America itself.

If we’re lucky, maybe the global economy will hold up, we won’t have any more bad storms, foreign terrorists will leave us alone, and somehow we’ll skate past this North Korea situation. Maybe. Because if not, we’re going to be in trouble, and the president’s going to be the last one to realize it.
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One of the many ironies about all the self congratulation that's going on is that it is based on how hard the people are working and what a great job they are doing. That is indleed true. I just read an article about the crew of the Kearsarge (sp?) and what incredibly long shifts they are putting in. I'm sure the same is true for the FEMA workers.

However, the reason they are putting in those long shifts is that they are using helicopters to ship bottled water. That's tough work, but it's a really inefficient way of getting drinking water to people. Surely the United States Army and Navy can ferry in the supplies needed to restart a water treatment plant. Maybe it's hard. Maybe there's some reason that it's more difficult than it seems, but it's a lot more efficient than using naval helicopters to deliver water bottles. Do they have to haul out the plastic trash, too? If the Kearsarge can't do the water treatment plant mission, find someone who is properly equipped to do it.

So, the irony is that we elected a businessman, because he knew better than politicians how to get things done, and instead of getting actual results, he's patting himself on the back for throwing lots of money and using lots of resources to show that he cares about the problem.
 
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Meadmaker said:
So, the irony is that we elected a businessman, because he knew better than politicians how to get things done, and instead of getting actual results, he's patting himself on the back for throwing lots of money and using lots of resources to show that he cares about the problem.
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Everything makes more sense if you accept that a reality TV star was elected and not a businessman.
 
Stacko said:
Everything makes more sense if you accept that a reality TV star was elected and not a businessman.
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This. Anyone who believes Trump has ever been anything other than a name is a fool. How would someone who ever negotiated a real estate deal in NYC think that renegotiating a trilateral trade deal would not only be "easy," but also done one country at a time?
 
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