The Fix: Powerwall batteries
After Hurricane Maria knocked out power for Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million residents in September 2017 and left them without basic resources like running water, Tesla pledged to help install battery packs and repair solar panels on the island.
While the official death toll was 64, a study released in the New England Journal of Medicine this year claimed that over 4,000 more people died in the three months after the hurricane, largely due to problems getting medical care or medicines.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Cruz said in September that it could take up to 6 months to restore the electric grid, and Tesla sent hundreds of its Powerwall batteries to help residents in the interim.
During an island-wide blackout in April, Musk tweeted that Tesla batteries were delivering power to 662 locations in Puerto Rico, and that employees were working to install hundreds more. In June, Musk tweeted that Tesla has "about 11,000 projects underway in Puerto Rico."
Musk has successfully provided power to areas affected by natural disasters before; In 2010, Musk and SolarCity donated a solar power system to a hurricane response center in the Gulf Coast village of Coden, Alabama. The project, built by SolarCity and funded by the Musk Foundation, provided residents with an alternate source of power in case of an outage.
The following year, the Musk Foundation donated $250,000 to build a solar power system in Soma, a city in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture that was devastated by a tsunami.
The Verdict: He's helping.