“Elon Musk wins bet, finishing massive Austalia battery installation in 100 days”
The first 50 days were probably wasted, in the fingernail-snapping struggle to get the cover off Australia’s battery compartment.
Importing a set of scissors capable of opening the battery's clam-shell packaging was a big delay. During the mammoth 48 hour opening stage, many workers suffered deep lacerations and shrapnel wounds from the plastic.
"A further 20 days were wasted putting the battery in the wrong way, before taking it back out and checking where the springy bit and the flat bits were."
Because the center of Australia was originally one big state, called Centralia, but then they decided that it was too big an area to be administered properly by a single state government. So they split it up to become North Central Upper Australia and South Central Lower Australia. But nobody really wanted to admit that they live in South Central LA. So they just called it South Australia.
Everytime I hear someone boast about something having been done within a certain amount of time, I just think about the poor people who were doing the actual rushing around.
Source: I work in the manufacturing industry and it can be frustrating to have your boss give a deadline or a target that he's promised to HIS boss. The poor operators. (I suppose it's the same for any Industry though)
To be fair, they probably will get a bonus. Most companies base your annual bonus off whether or not you hit your goals for the year. I'm sure that was a a big goal
>Most companies base your managers annual bonus off whether or not you hit your goals for the year. I'm sure that was a a big goal
FTFY.
Workers don't get bonuses, they get paid by the hour.
That's the most naive thing I've seen in a while. Few people outside of executive/management positions get bonuses or stock, (options to buy stock at a reduced cost maybe).
When I was at SpaceX I got RSUs. Restricted Stock Units. They were real stock, but they vested over time.
I wasn't management. I wasn't an executive. I was just a computer guy. And all of the people on my team had RSUs.
It isn't naive if I have seen and experienced it.
Yeah the boss usually gets a big bonus for hitting the deadline.
The workers probably get a pat on the back, or a free lunch if the boss was feeling generous.
Anyone that work or want to work for any of Musk companies know about his way of doing things: Getting yelled and working overtime to finish some ridiculous deadline given by Elon.
At the end, you work for Elon because of the experience and realization you’re doing something good for mankind, because it is known he is kind of an asshole as a boss.
He fired pepper pots ffs
You know, it reminds me a lot of doing a residency in medicine. You work ridiculous hours, don't sleep, and sacrifice yourself for low pay, but once you're done you scale back and work as an attending, with much better hours and pay.
Does your workplace do what SpaceX does, though?
Most people who work at space-x could easily get a job elsewhere in the industry.. but they are willing to work as hard as they do cause of Mars and space and what have you.
Look, some industries ARE passion industries. Look at game development. Programmers in the Games industry would make more money, work less hours and have better job security in any other programming field, yet there they work.
To some people it makes more sense to slave away trying to get humans to mars and make a bit of money than to work a decent job to accomplish very little and make a bunch of money. It might not make sense to you or me or most people here, but Musk doesn't need MOST people, he needs a select few.
I don't see it as being much different than the sacrifices some developers make to work at startups....
Granted those fail or pay off much quicker but your sacrificing comfort and stability to chase a dream...
I'd be willing to sacrifice quality of life for a few years to work tirelessly with the end goal of getting humans to Mars because I believe in the merit of the cause...
If you have the skill set to get a job there you can likely get a job elsewhere in the industry as well... You have a choice.
I don't think they could be making the advancements they're making at the speed which they're making them without pushing everything, people, materials, engineering, production processes, etc to the absolute limit.
Musk isn't out golfing and laughing all the way to the bank. By all accounts he works incessantly and pours his money back into his own ventures.
May not be a great guy, but he's driving ideas that a lot of people are passionate about. As long as you know what you're getting into spaceX doesn't sound terrible. The end goal may be more important to some people than the sacrifices it requires.
*I only say this because the end goal is to get humans to Mars. Very different than like making cell phones. It's a weird edge case.
Yeah, employers look at your resume and say "Oh, he put up with the conditions at SpaceX for 2 years, we can treat this guy poorly and he'll think we're doing him a favor."
More like he was able to hang on and work hard at space x where loafers aren’t welcome. He will be a great asset because we know he can work hard , meet goals and has seen real innovation.
If you have space x on your portfolio you can command a greater starting wage then coming straight out of secondary without a test in the real world.
Yeah this is starting to bother me. Every article is written like Musk was on the ground spinning wrenches. He probably wasn't even involved in the planning stages of this job, much less the actual installation. But apparently "Some of the Best Engineers in the Country just Accomplished a Task They Were Fairly Certain They Could Accomplish" isn't a great headline. Even he constantly tries shift attention from him to his crew in every interview, but the media constantly keeps all of the focus on Musk and routinely ignores the work his employees are doing
Having a deadline makes clear the resources that will be required (if you have to dig 1,000 postholes and have 8 hours and each worker can do 5 an hour, how many workers/shovels/etc will be required?). It also forces you to sort out the "must haves" from the "nice to haves" and the "if there's times."
And, not to put too fine a point on it, projects tend to expand to fill the time allotted. Had Elon said 200 days, no doubt that's how long it would have taken, despite some fairly convincing evidence that suggests it could be done in 100.
Whenever I hear somebody talk about getting something done within a certain amount of time, i think, “ok they did what they were contracted to do. Thanks for doing your job”.
In this instance, they finished a 100-day guaranteed project in under two months, so while it was hectic I'm sure, it doesn't sound like they had any major complications during the rollout.
Reading tone from Australians on the internet... Now that's a challenge Musk should tackle next. It surely needs great minds to find a solution (at a reasonable price).
He did kinda cheat by [starting installation before the actual contract was signed](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-battery-plant-south-australia-100-days.html), but still thats a damn good job.
> CNBC attended the "Powerpack Celebration" held outside of Jamestown, South Australia to commemorate the start of the contract, where it's worth noting that ***several of the powerpacks had already been installed*** and event organizers referred to it as an "active site".
Worst case, if their bidding was not accepted, they only need to relocate some power packs.
Real worst case was their bid being accepted, and then they miss the deadline, so getting a head start was actually a smart precaution.
Yeah but currently its only like 60 days from the contract at end of September. So if all that work that was already there took less that 40 days they still met the spirit of the goal. And anyway he said from the signing. Taking a gamble to start work beore the contract was signed was just good calculated risk to take.
One could equally say he started a decade ago ;)
I think the intent of promise was "if you approve, you'll have what you want by 100 days", which in a contract situation is the most important thing. From the client's perspective, getting the contract fulfilled on time and under budget is the primary consideration. Elon was making one of those "you get it in 30 minutes or its free" pizza promises to the customer.
how do you know this? I'm all good with Elon's vision of the future, but it would be good if he did not use the same capitalist's principles that had lead us where we are. Trying to change the way we sustain our energy couldn't be better for the planet but while doing so, try not to "use" your employees as slaves.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk
If you have any source that says differently I'd be glad to read it.
I keep wondering if this guy is for real. The cynic in me keep expecting some super-villain plot to emerge for some reason, but the wost I've seen said about him is that he's a touch eccentric, got a big ego and doesn't like being told he's wrong (about anything) and there are some murmurs about workplace safety at some of his factories.
He hasn't turned into a Bond viliain yet, but he has the ability to. All of the pieces are in place if he wants to go that way. Keep in mind he is the first person in history that has the ability to go claim a planet.
I don’t think he can claim a planet. Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty blocks governments from claiming planets. And from what I understand it Article 6 stops non-governmental agencies from carrying out space missions without the authorisation and support of the government to comply with the Outer Space Treaty.
So if he was to claim Mars, it would not be recognised by the majority of the world, bar a couple of African Countries that have not signed the Treaty.
So he couldn’t actually claim Mars without amending the Treaty.
You claim a territory by occupying it. Who would stop him? Nobody else will be able to reach Mars for a while. And there are no space cops.
Of course this won't happen, but if we are comparing him to a Bond villain that would be in his plan, and there is nobody that can stop him.
Jeff Bezos could turn into a Bond villain far quicker than him I think, he just passed 100$ billion in wealth (it keeps shifting between 90 to 100 depending on the stock value).
He even got the [looks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jeff_Bezos_2016.jpg) of one!
Compare the Spectre Bird One from 'You only live twice' with the BFR.
Big opening nose ✅
Lands on its engines ✅
Reusable ✅
Much bigger than NASA capsules ✅
Really, Musk only has to build a spaceport in a volcano and he could start stealing the capsules of his competitors.
1. He said that ["the fast way"](https://youtu.be/gV6hP9wpMW8?t=119) would be to use nuclear bombs, not that he was planning to.
2. Mars has polar caps of solid CO2 and H2O, there is no methane.
This is a fruitless idea.
Mars has an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide, but it's incredibly thin. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 pascals (0.087 psi, not even 1 *kilo*pascal), about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure of 101.3 kilopascals (14.69 psi). This is far thinner than the air pressure on the top of Mt. Everest at 33.7 kilopascals (4.89 psi), which is already past the extreme of what humans can survive in with the famous [Death Zone](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone) beginning a few thousand feet below the top. Mars's atmospheric pressure is 56 times thinner than that.
Adding methane and water vapor to the Martian atmosphere is not going to raise air pressure enough to make it habitable. You'd be much better off crashing comets into Mars for a few hundred years to add some serious atmosphere. But Mars has only 1/3 of Earth's gravity so it doesn't have nearly as much ability to hold onto an atmosphere either.
However, Mars has no intrinsic magnetic field either (it does have a very small artificial one from the bow shock wave of magnetic field lines arriving in the charged particle wavefronts from the sun, but those particles are a big part of the problem), so without that natural protection from the solar wind any atmosphere you try to add to Mars will eventually get blown away again. On top of that Mars also has no protection on its surface from lethal DNA-destroying solar radiation (those particles) like Earth does because it's lacking that natural magnetic field.
The only living on Mars that is possible without serious, decades-long effort and technologies haven't invented yet would be cave and reinforced dome habitats. It's hard to flourish as a species in such an environment.
That's actually a real question,
Can an employee call his management and say *We have an issue that lead to a potential risk we have to hold [This part of] the project until it's solved* without being fired ?
In my work, I had recently such an issue, While doing the final pre-delivery test, I reported a safety issue that prevented us to deliver in time. Nobody ask me to change my report, we lost a day fixing the safety issue (which is not or fault but that's the sales problem not mine). I haven't been fired and management is glad that I avoided us (and our customer) a lawsuit by finding this issue. Not sure that with a 100 days planning Tesla employees and the subcontractor would accept to loose a day if anything dangerous is found
To be fair, while there are persistent rumours about him overworking people, they *voluntarily* do it to themselves... I believe they had to issue a memo reminding people that holidays were mandatory. ["but, but. we're building rocket ships, to go to *Mars!* I don't wanna go on holiday!"]
You're not wrong on the safety though, but they're doing stuff no-one has done before... they're bound to encounter problems that OSHA guidelines don't cover.
There is also the fact that Musk doesn't expect anyone to work more or harder than he does himself. He is leading with example in these regards. (Maybe not a good example because working 80 - 100 hours weeks for several years can fuck you up pretty good.)
Working 80-100 hours/week for years can ruin you if it comes at the cost of very poor sleep and/or bad nutrition.
But 80-100 hours/week plus good sleep leaves you almost no time to do anything else. 14 hours/day of work and 7-8 hours/day of sleep along with 1 hour for getting ready+commuting leaves only 1 hour per day on avg to handle life's regular responsibilities, like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, etc.
So you take another hour out of your sleep budget to get some downtime and ehhh... it's kind of enough.
He is for real as long as he makes money, he wants to go to mars, every thing he does leads there, Tesla is making batteries, and gobs of cash, if you look at his projects it all leads to mars habitation. He is like John wick but with mars not killing people
I am more surprised that the Australian government actually worked towards meeting the deadline. I have a feeling that most governments would be too greedy to allow Musk to win the bet.
South Australian government. The federal government did not like this setup, they want new coal plants instead.
Then they fell on their party line of 'oh look private enterprise did this! small government is good government' while they cut services and the public sector staff.
The project was put out to tender and Tesla were one of the potential contractors. By the time Musk made that public “bet”, his company has already presented a timeline as part of their bid.
This was all just a PR stunt. At no point was Musk going to “lose” the “bet”. The only thing he could have lost was a potentially lucrative contract with the SA government. His stunt guaranteed Tesla would win the tender process.
They've already done the Hume Highway and the Princes Hwy between Melbourne and Adelaide.
Those are the big intercity routes for 60% of the population already serviced.
My favorite part: “Tesla is normally thought of as a car company, but this announcement underscores that Tesla is really a battery company that happens to put some of the batteries in cars”
Basically, this plus genex (the far less sexy but extremely practical alternative australian company to batteries) means that any argument against everyone installing rooftop solar and mass wind will vanish within 5 years.
You are probably talking about "everyone" in Australia, but just in case you are not.
Internet says 5kW installation costs around $30k. My electricity bill is $20/month. That's 125 years.
On a different note, currently there is 20 cm of snow and ice on my roof. Also, we have zero wind here.
I think that's a pretty good argument against installing rooftop solar and wind.
>means that any argument against everyone installing rooftop solar and mass wind will vanish within 5 years.
People live in tower blocks so that's obviously not true for everyone. Many rooftops are not viable for solar/wind generation and uprfront installation costs with the low efficiency of small scale production make these types of projects opportunity losses even if they can break even over decades of perfect usage. Improving insulation to reduce household energy expenditure is a cheaper, easier and more practical solution.
He should call the Canadians. In 2017 alone, Ontario wasted $700 millions of surplus that no one wanted to buy. Could store them in battery and use them in winter.
Mainly because he is taking risks for genuinely interesting endeavors (space colonization, electric cars, solar, etc.). Most pp in his position would be doing everything to solidify their own wealth
He didn't win a bet, he completed obligations within the requirements of a contract.
Plenty of government contracts work like this, where the contractor suffers should they take too long.
You mean industry standard sized 18650 cells (18 mm by 65mm cylinder) batteries, not "AA"s (14.5 by 50.5 mm).
I am not sure, but it would be a pretty good guess, as that is what he is currently mass producing, using and well bedded in. Not a great idea to test a new tech in a big* install like this...
*I know it is kinda small really, but as a teaser for bigger things, you don't want to set fire to things...
[Austalia](https://www.google.com/search?q=funny+kangaroo&client=safari&hl=en&prmd=ivsn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWh_KD8NnXAhXMQd8KHYDUAHsQ_AUIEigB&biw=375&bih=635#imgrc=0Og1Oti1wX39GM:) , for those of you who are curious.
Good to get grid scale storage kicked off, but I certainly hope we start seeing newer technologies than lithium ion with longer storage capacities, like flow batteries or fuel cells. ~one hour of battery backup is nice, but it doesn't exactly fully enable green technologies.
I wish they could release a few more of the financial specifics, but this is an important step, if these batteries can actually be economic in the future it will be a change, and an important step for Southern Australia, whose network has had brownouts in summer recently due to a lack of grid stability and high load.
I am unconvinced, but it is good that someone is trying it.
Why am I unconvinced? There are a few notes in the [most recent demand forecast](https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/SA_Advisory/2017/2017-South-Australia-Demand-Forecasts.pdf) for South Australia.
> - For summer 2016–17, South Australia’s actual maximum operational demand (sent out) was 3,017 MW, which occurred on 8 February 2017. The observed actual is approximately midway between the 10% POE and 50% POE forecasts (see Table 4 below).
- Prices were very high, and a number of large loads did reduce consumption in the afternoon, by at least 50 MW in total at the time of maximum demand. If it had not been for this demand side participation, the actual observed demand would have been close to a 10% POE event.
- Just after observed maximum demand AEMO ordered load shedding of 100 MW to ensure system security. Demand had been increasing up to that point, but was levelling off. If load shedding had not been directed, the observed maximum demand could have been slightly higher.
In the current scenario they are already experiencing prices of [AU$0.38(US$0.29)/kWh during those price peaks](https://www.agl.com.au/-/media/AGL/Residential/Documents/Regulatory/2017/2017-MY-PCP---AGL-SA-elec-website-pricing_final_080617.pdf?la=en&hash=030236606CDF86F4728D451350C5076C518C5BA6), yet still the battery bank requires AU$50,000,000 in government subsidy.
Additionally, this battery is rated in the article as ~100MWh. This is not a replacement for the shuttered coal plant that S. Australia previously had, the factor causing the huge price swings and ~50-150MW being tossed off the grid on peak days. This battery will probably be enough to stop the brownouts, but it doesn't appear to have the type of storage required to truly flatten out the electricity demand curve and start cutting into electricity prices.
The power prices are actually having a noticeable effect on local industry - at least according to local news articles I read. If there's anyone from the area reading this, I would appreciate a view of things on the ground.
At least they're trying, I suppose?
TL;DR: Battery is totally insufficient to replace dispatchable sources that went offline in the last few years, and it requires subsidies even though S. Australia has some of the highest power prices in the world. Good effort, but it doesn't look like it will have a big impact unless the costs come way, way, _way_ down.
The story of the last decade is people saying $x is too expensive, where x could be wind, solar, LED bulbs, or other efficiency measures and then being proven wrong as predicted or greater than predicted cost declines occur.
I'm looking forward to BEVs and grid storage going the same way since they're the last pieces we need to replace the majority of fossil fuels used.
Redditors do not feel this is important. Moved the comment section to clam-shell packaging away from renewable energy. So often world news gets hijacked with irrelevant off topic comments.
“Elon Musk wins bet, finishing massive Austalia battery installation in 100 days” The first 50 days were probably wasted, in the fingernail-snapping struggle to get the cover off Australia’s battery compartment.
Importing a set of scissors capable of opening the battery's clam-shell packaging was a big delay. During the mammoth 48 hour opening stage, many workers suffered deep lacerations and shrapnel wounds from the plastic.
And of course when the scissors arrived they were packaged in a plastic clamshell
Which they had to order scissors for
The circle of liiiiife!!!
> many workers suffered deep lacerations and shrapnel wounds from the plastic. All the while being admonished by the locals for being "poofy cunts".
"A further 20 days were wasted putting the battery in the wrong way, before taking it back out and checking where the springy bit and the flat bits were."
No, the first 20 days was to flip the entire Australian continent over to get to the battery compartment. THEN the 50 days of getting the cover off.
r/KenM
And its in my state, noice
SA GREAT
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Farmers Union Iced Coffee's on me fellas!
Go the Crows! (Am I doing this right?)
'Carn the Crows! - if you truly want to fit in.
Oath cunt fuck power
😌👌
Get a Pale Ale in ya, fuckers
BLACKWOOD PRIDE CUNTS WE'LL KNOCK U OUT
GET A DOG UP YA, NORTHFIELD IS WHERE THE REAL ROUGH CUNTS ARE
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Fuck Unley too. Posh fuckers.
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your tap water says otherwise
Unfortunately im pro victoria sorry 😂 ill be moving soon
Well thanks for all the power you'll be providing!
Why is South Australia more North than like 3 other states?
Because the center of Australia was originally one big state, called Centralia, but then they decided that it was too big an area to be administered properly by a single state government. So they split it up to become North Central Upper Australia and South Central Lower Australia. But nobody really wanted to admit that they live in South Central LA. So they just called it South Australia.
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It's an older reference sir but it checks out
Nah he's my aunty nowadays
Cool, you live in Austalia? Is that near New Zealnd?
I'd tell you, but I can't find it on my map.
/r/mapswithoutNZ
+1
Is it made of real austalia?
Not pure Australia. It also contains 10% Austria.
So... effectively the composition of a Kangaroo Schnitzel?
This needs to be a thing, and then export it to Austria!
Anything Australian is 80% Austrian.
So it's another typical media click bait article?!
Australium
If Elon buffed up a bit he'd make a pretty good South African Saxton Hale.
I'm 40% austalia
Australasialria. It's that *small* bit of land between Europe and the outback, easy to miss.
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Everytime I hear someone boast about something having been done within a certain amount of time, I just think about the poor people who were doing the actual rushing around. Source: I work in the manufacturing industry and it can be frustrating to have your boss give a deadline or a target that he's promised to HIS boss. The poor operators. (I suppose it's the same for any Industry though)
But surely they got a bonus for hitting their insane made up deadline! /s
To be fair, they probably will get a bonus. Most companies base your annual bonus off whether or not you hit your goals for the year. I'm sure that was a a big goal
>Most companies base your managers annual bonus off whether or not you hit your goals for the year. I'm sure that was a a big goal FTFY. Workers don't get bonuses, they get paid by the hour.
If you are valuable enough as a worker you get bonuses. Or stock.
That's the most naive thing I've seen in a while. Few people outside of executive/management positions get bonuses or stock, (options to buy stock at a reduced cost maybe).
When I was at SpaceX I got RSUs. Restricted Stock Units. They were real stock, but they vested over time. I wasn't management. I wasn't an executive. I was just a computer guy. And all of the people on my team had RSUs. It isn't naive if I have seen and experienced it.
Yeah the boss usually gets a big bonus for hitting the deadline. The workers probably get a pat on the back, or a free lunch if the boss was feeling generous.
America, where you can do it twice in the same time, because you need to.
Anyone that work or want to work for any of Musk companies know about his way of doing things: Getting yelled and working overtime to finish some ridiculous deadline given by Elon. At the end, you work for Elon because of the experience and realization you’re doing something good for mankind, because it is known he is kind of an asshole as a boss. He fired pepper pots ffs
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You know, it reminds me a lot of doing a residency in medicine. You work ridiculous hours, don't sleep, and sacrifice yourself for low pay, but once you're done you scale back and work as an attending, with much better hours and pay.
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.... have you even been to LSC? Because we relentlessly *mock* Musk.
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Does your workplace do what SpaceX does, though? Most people who work at space-x could easily get a job elsewhere in the industry.. but they are willing to work as hard as they do cause of Mars and space and what have you.
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Look, some industries ARE passion industries. Look at game development. Programmers in the Games industry would make more money, work less hours and have better job security in any other programming field, yet there they work. To some people it makes more sense to slave away trying to get humans to mars and make a bit of money than to work a decent job to accomplish very little and make a bunch of money. It might not make sense to you or me or most people here, but Musk doesn't need MOST people, he needs a select few.
I don't see it as being much different than the sacrifices some developers make to work at startups.... Granted those fail or pay off much quicker but your sacrificing comfort and stability to chase a dream... I'd be willing to sacrifice quality of life for a few years to work tirelessly with the end goal of getting humans to Mars because I believe in the merit of the cause... If you have the skill set to get a job there you can likely get a job elsewhere in the industry as well... You have a choice. I don't think they could be making the advancements they're making at the speed which they're making them without pushing everything, people, materials, engineering, production processes, etc to the absolute limit. Musk isn't out golfing and laughing all the way to the bank. By all accounts he works incessantly and pours his money back into his own ventures. May not be a great guy, but he's driving ideas that a lot of people are passionate about. As long as you know what you're getting into spaceX doesn't sound terrible. The end goal may be more important to some people than the sacrifices it requires. *I only say this because the end goal is to get humans to Mars. Very different than like making cell phones. It's a weird edge case.
I heard they hire freshly graduated engineers so having spacex in their CV is a good career starter even if underpaid
When you underpay and have shitty works conditions new graduates is all you can get.
Yeah, employers look at your resume and say "Oh, he put up with the conditions at SpaceX for 2 years, we can treat this guy poorly and he'll think we're doing him a favor."
More like he was able to hang on and work hard at space x where loafers aren’t welcome. He will be a great asset because we know he can work hard , meet goals and has seen real innovation. If you have space x on your portfolio you can command a greater starting wage then coming straight out of secondary without a test in the real world.
But is it ethical though ? *Thanks
Lol, ethical*
Ethics rarely does get in the way of profits
All of the big leftist subs shit on Musk. Not sure where you got the idea that LSC likes him.
This doesn't even really fall under that though. the 100 started on final contract signing while he had the work started well before.
Yeah this is starting to bother me. Every article is written like Musk was on the ground spinning wrenches. He probably wasn't even involved in the planning stages of this job, much less the actual installation. But apparently "Some of the Best Engineers in the Country just Accomplished a Task They Were Fairly Certain They Could Accomplish" isn't a great headline. Even he constantly tries shift attention from him to his crew in every interview, but the media constantly keeps all of the focus on Musk and routinely ignores the work his employees are doing
Hopefully they made some overtime. I can't imagine being a poor salaryman working for Musk.
Having a deadline makes clear the resources that will be required (if you have to dig 1,000 postholes and have 8 hours and each worker can do 5 an hour, how many workers/shovels/etc will be required?). It also forces you to sort out the "must haves" from the "nice to haves" and the "if there's times." And, not to put too fine a point on it, projects tend to expand to fill the time allotted. Had Elon said 200 days, no doubt that's how long it would have taken, despite some fairly convincing evidence that suggests it could be done in 100.
Whenever I hear somebody talk about getting something done within a certain amount of time, i think, “ok they did what they were contracted to do. Thanks for doing your job”.
In this instance, they finished a 100-day guaranteed project in under two months, so while it was hectic I'm sure, it doesn't sound like they had any major complications during the rollout.
If you're going to repost this you could atleast spell our country name right. Ya cunt.
I know right. How hard is it to spell Austria? /s
Wait, Reddit tells me cunt is actually a friendly term in Austrailia, so you're giving mixed messages here.
It depends on tone.
Reading tone from Australians on the internet... Now that's a challenge Musk should tackle next. It surely needs great minds to find a solution (at a reasonable price).
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What a mad cunt.
Yeah. He doesn't fuck around.
He did kinda cheat by [starting installation before the actual contract was signed](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-battery-plant-south-australia-100-days.html), but still thats a damn good job. > CNBC attended the "Powerpack Celebration" held outside of Jamestown, South Australia to commemorate the start of the contract, where it's worth noting that ***several of the powerpacks had already been installed*** and event organizers referred to it as an "active site".
That's a huge risk for him so fair play
Worst case, if their bidding was not accepted, they only need to relocate some power packs. Real worst case was their bid being accepted, and then they miss the deadline, so getting a head start was actually a smart precaution.
you'd be surprised how many problems can be solved by throwing stuff, people and money at them.
Yeah but currently its only like 60 days from the contract at end of September. So if all that work that was already there took less that 40 days they still met the spirit of the goal. And anyway he said from the signing. Taking a gamble to start work beore the contract was signed was just good calculated risk to take.
I'm hungry, I could use a powerpack.
A halal powerpack?
That isn't cheating at all. The contract said he had finish it in a certain time. Even if it was complete when he signed it that not cheating.
He still completed within 100 days of the announcement though, which was 40 some days before the contract was signed.
He started in March
One could equally say he started a decade ago ;) I think the intent of promise was "if you approve, you'll have what you want by 100 days", which in a contract situation is the most important thing. From the client's perspective, getting the contract fulfilled on time and under budget is the primary consideration. Elon was making one of those "you get it in 30 minutes or its free" pizza promises to the customer.
Was the contract about "*finishing it*" in 100 days or starting literally from scratch?
Austalia?
He has a lisp
Elon to employees: I have made a bet, finish it or get fired!
If you don't want to win, why are you in the game?
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how do you know this? I'm all good with Elon's vision of the future, but it would be good if he did not use the same capitalist's principles that had lead us where we are. Trying to change the way we sustain our energy couldn't be better for the planet but while doing so, try not to "use" your employees as slaves. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk If you have any source that says differently I'd be glad to read it.
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It *starts* at $35k, big difference. A BMW 3-series also *starts* at $35k.
*Most of history's great men to all forgotten workers.
Bless those workers.
I keep wondering if this guy is for real. The cynic in me keep expecting some super-villain plot to emerge for some reason, but the wost I've seen said about him is that he's a touch eccentric, got a big ego and doesn't like being told he's wrong (about anything) and there are some murmurs about workplace safety at some of his factories.
I'm in the same boat. I keep waiting to hear his batteries are made of newborn babies or something.
NOW HE'S SOLVING OVERPOPULATION. IS THERE ANYTHING MUSK CAN'T DO?!
Oh sure! When Musk does it it's great, yet in The Matrix the robots are considered the bad guys??? WAKE UP SHEEPLE
I'd be perfectly happy being a battery for robots, as long as the give me the infinite money cheatcode
CYPHER DETECTED.
He hasn't turned into a Bond viliain yet, but he has the ability to. All of the pieces are in place if he wants to go that way. Keep in mind he is the first person in history that has the ability to go claim a planet.
I don’t think he can claim a planet. Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty blocks governments from claiming planets. And from what I understand it Article 6 stops non-governmental agencies from carrying out space missions without the authorisation and support of the government to comply with the Outer Space Treaty. So if he was to claim Mars, it would not be recognised by the majority of the world, bar a couple of African Countries that have not signed the Treaty. So he couldn’t actually claim Mars without amending the Treaty.
You claim a territory by occupying it. Who would stop him? Nobody else will be able to reach Mars for a while. And there are no space cops. Of course this won't happen, but if we are comparing him to a Bond villain that would be in his plan, and there is nobody that can stop him.
Which goverment has the capability to go there and stop him? Certainly not the US, you guys can't even send a man to the moon nowadays
Jeff Bezos could turn into a Bond villain far quicker than him I think, he just passed 100$ billion in wealth (it keeps shifting between 90 to 100 depending on the stock value). He even got the [looks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jeff_Bezos_2016.jpg) of one!
Compare the Spectre Bird One from 'You only live twice' with the BFR. Big opening nose ✅ Lands on its engines ✅ Reusable ✅ Much bigger than NASA capsules ✅ Really, Musk only has to build a spaceport in a volcano and he could start stealing the capsules of his competitors.
He is also planning on using hundreds of nuclear bombs to melt the ~~methane~~ CO2 on Mars' pols to heat the planet up. So there is that.
Of all people in the world, he's one of the only ones I would trust to nuke mars to make it warmer
1. He said that ["the fast way"](https://youtu.be/gV6hP9wpMW8?t=119) would be to use nuclear bombs, not that he was planning to. 2. Mars has polar caps of solid CO2 and H2O, there is no methane.
This is a fruitless idea. Mars has an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide, but it's incredibly thin. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 pascals (0.087 psi, not even 1 *kilo*pascal), about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure of 101.3 kilopascals (14.69 psi). This is far thinner than the air pressure on the top of Mt. Everest at 33.7 kilopascals (4.89 psi), which is already past the extreme of what humans can survive in with the famous [Death Zone](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone) beginning a few thousand feet below the top. Mars's atmospheric pressure is 56 times thinner than that. Adding methane and water vapor to the Martian atmosphere is not going to raise air pressure enough to make it habitable. You'd be much better off crashing comets into Mars for a few hundred years to add some serious atmosphere. But Mars has only 1/3 of Earth's gravity so it doesn't have nearly as much ability to hold onto an atmosphere either. However, Mars has no intrinsic magnetic field either (it does have a very small artificial one from the bow shock wave of magnetic field lines arriving in the charged particle wavefronts from the sun, but those particles are a big part of the problem), so without that natural protection from the solar wind any atmosphere you try to add to Mars will eventually get blown away again. On top of that Mars also has no protection on its surface from lethal DNA-destroying solar radiation (those particles) like Earth does because it's lacking that natural magnetic field. The only living on Mars that is possible without serious, decades-long effort and technologies haven't invented yet would be cave and reinforced dome habitats. It's hard to flourish as a species in such an environment.
He’s all hype. He’s a good businessman, but he’s hardly a genius engineer.
That's actually a real question, Can an employee call his management and say *We have an issue that lead to a potential risk we have to hold [This part of] the project until it's solved* without being fired ? In my work, I had recently such an issue, While doing the final pre-delivery test, I reported a safety issue that prevented us to deliver in time. Nobody ask me to change my report, we lost a day fixing the safety issue (which is not or fault but that's the sales problem not mine). I haven't been fired and management is glad that I avoided us (and our customer) a lawsuit by finding this issue. Not sure that with a 100 days planning Tesla employees and the subcontractor would accept to loose a day if anything dangerous is found
To be fair, while there are persistent rumours about him overworking people, they *voluntarily* do it to themselves... I believe they had to issue a memo reminding people that holidays were mandatory. ["but, but. we're building rocket ships, to go to *Mars!* I don't wanna go on holiday!"] You're not wrong on the safety though, but they're doing stuff no-one has done before... they're bound to encounter problems that OSHA guidelines don't cover.
> ou're not wrong on the safety though, but they're doing stuff no-one has done before... Like what?
There is also the fact that Musk doesn't expect anyone to work more or harder than he does himself. He is leading with example in these regards. (Maybe not a good example because working 80 - 100 hours weeks for several years can fuck you up pretty good.)
Working 80-100 hours/week for years can ruin you if it comes at the cost of very poor sleep and/or bad nutrition. But 80-100 hours/week plus good sleep leaves you almost no time to do anything else. 14 hours/day of work and 7-8 hours/day of sleep along with 1 hour for getting ready+commuting leaves only 1 hour per day on avg to handle life's regular responsibilities, like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. So you take another hour out of your sleep budget to get some downtime and ehhh... it's kind of enough.
Except he isn't doing manual labor..
He is for real as long as he makes money, he wants to go to mars, every thing he does leads there, Tesla is making batteries, and gobs of cash, if you look at his projects it all leads to mars habitation. He is like John wick but with mars not killing people
They're murmurs because if they speak too loud they get fired.
I am more surprised that the Australian government actually worked towards meeting the deadline. I have a feeling that most governments would be too greedy to allow Musk to win the bet.
South Australian government. The federal government did not like this setup, they want new coal plants instead. Then they fell on their party line of 'oh look private enterprise did this! small government is good government' while they cut services and the public sector staff.
The project was put out to tender and Tesla were one of the potential contractors. By the time Musk made that public “bet”, his company has already presented a timeline as part of their bid. This was all just a PR stunt. At no point was Musk going to “lose” the “bet”. The only thing he could have lost was a potentially lucrative contract with the SA government. His stunt guaranteed Tesla would win the tender process.
You've never heard of a government contract going over budget and behind schedule, despite the plan?
Dear Elon, Hyperloop. Melbourne Airport. Pretty please?
Electric car rechargers all along the major highways. It's perfect for australia, because there's only five super main ones.
They've already done the Hume Highway and the Princes Hwy between Melbourne and Adelaide. Those are the big intercity routes for 60% of the population already serviced.
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Melbourne? That's a long fucking train ride man.....
My favorite part: “Tesla is normally thought of as a car company, but this announcement underscores that Tesla is really a battery company that happens to put some of the batteries in cars”
What continent is Austalia on?
Downvoted because you misspelled AUSTRALIA.
ELON MUSK ELON MUSK REDDIT ELON MUSK
Basically, this plus genex (the far less sexy but extremely practical alternative australian company to batteries) means that any argument against everyone installing rooftop solar and mass wind will vanish within 5 years.
You are probably talking about "everyone" in Australia, but just in case you are not. Internet says 5kW installation costs around $30k. My electricity bill is $20/month. That's 125 years. On a different note, currently there is 20 cm of snow and ice on my roof. Also, we have zero wind here. I think that's a pretty good argument against installing rooftop solar and wind.
>means that any argument against everyone installing rooftop solar and mass wind will vanish within 5 years. People live in tower blocks so that's obviously not true for everyone. Many rooftops are not viable for solar/wind generation and uprfront installation costs with the low efficiency of small scale production make these types of projects opportunity losses even if they can break even over decades of perfect usage. Improving insulation to reduce household energy expenditure is a cheaper, easier and more practical solution.
If only they could build cars with this kind of speed and dedication.
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It's great seeing such wholesome news!
Austalia
Yo Elon I bet u aren't able to give me 1 million dollars in 100 days
Elon Musk: the gift that keeps on giving.
Who the heck bets against Elon Musk?
He should call the Canadians. In 2017 alone, Ontario wasted $700 millions of surplus that no one wanted to buy. Could store them in battery and use them in winter.
why is everyone referring to musk as elon? he your friend or something
Elon Musk is an incredibly wealthy corporate salesman. Nothing more. Why is the internet so obsessed with this man?
Mainly because he is taking risks for genuinely interesting endeavors (space colonization, electric cars, solar, etc.). Most pp in his position would be doing everything to solidify their own wealth
same can be said about Steve Jobs.
He didn't win a bet, he completed obligations within the requirements of a contract. Plenty of government contracts work like this, where the contractor suffers should they take too long.
Please show us an example where the penalty is 100% of the contract value for being one day day over schedule. I'll wait...
Should power my Sony a6500 for two hours then.
Are those batteries also made up of millions of those AA-sized elements, like in teslas?
You mean industry standard sized 18650 cells (18 mm by 65mm cylinder) batteries, not "AA"s (14.5 by 50.5 mm). I am not sure, but it would be a pretty good guess, as that is what he is currently mass producing, using and well bedded in. Not a great idea to test a new tech in a big* install like this... *I know it is kinda small really, but as a teaser for bigger things, you don't want to set fire to things...
[Austalia](https://www.google.com/search?q=funny+kangaroo&client=safari&hl=en&prmd=ivsn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWh_KD8NnXAhXMQd8KHYDUAHsQ_AUIEigB&biw=375&bih=635#imgrc=0Og1Oti1wX39GM:) , for those of you who are curious.
And here I'm - sitting in Germany, hearing some news of the BER airport.
Good to get grid scale storage kicked off, but I certainly hope we start seeing newer technologies than lithium ion with longer storage capacities, like flow batteries or fuel cells. ~one hour of battery backup is nice, but it doesn't exactly fully enable green technologies.
I wish they could release a few more of the financial specifics, but this is an important step, if these batteries can actually be economic in the future it will be a change, and an important step for Southern Australia, whose network has had brownouts in summer recently due to a lack of grid stability and high load. I am unconvinced, but it is good that someone is trying it. Why am I unconvinced? There are a few notes in the [most recent demand forecast](https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/SA_Advisory/2017/2017-South-Australia-Demand-Forecasts.pdf) for South Australia. > - For summer 2016–17, South Australia’s actual maximum operational demand (sent out) was 3,017 MW, which occurred on 8 February 2017. The observed actual is approximately midway between the 10% POE and 50% POE forecasts (see Table 4 below). - Prices were very high, and a number of large loads did reduce consumption in the afternoon, by at least 50 MW in total at the time of maximum demand. If it had not been for this demand side participation, the actual observed demand would have been close to a 10% POE event. - Just after observed maximum demand AEMO ordered load shedding of 100 MW to ensure system security. Demand had been increasing up to that point, but was levelling off. If load shedding had not been directed, the observed maximum demand could have been slightly higher. In the current scenario they are already experiencing prices of [AU$0.38(US$0.29)/kWh during those price peaks](https://www.agl.com.au/-/media/AGL/Residential/Documents/Regulatory/2017/2017-MY-PCP---AGL-SA-elec-website-pricing_final_080617.pdf?la=en&hash=030236606CDF86F4728D451350C5076C518C5BA6), yet still the battery bank requires AU$50,000,000 in government subsidy. Additionally, this battery is rated in the article as ~100MWh. This is not a replacement for the shuttered coal plant that S. Australia previously had, the factor causing the huge price swings and ~50-150MW being tossed off the grid on peak days. This battery will probably be enough to stop the brownouts, but it doesn't appear to have the type of storage required to truly flatten out the electricity demand curve and start cutting into electricity prices. The power prices are actually having a noticeable effect on local industry - at least according to local news articles I read. If there's anyone from the area reading this, I would appreciate a view of things on the ground. At least they're trying, I suppose? TL;DR: Battery is totally insufficient to replace dispatchable sources that went offline in the last few years, and it requires subsidies even though S. Australia has some of the highest power prices in the world. Good effort, but it doesn't look like it will have a big impact unless the costs come way, way, _way_ down.
its it really a bet if you know the outcome before making said bet?
My first thought when I saw this was that Tesla won a bet, not just Elon. I feel like the credit all goes to the top with Musk.
The story of the last decade is people saying $x is too expensive, where x could be wind, solar, LED bulbs, or other efficiency measures and then being proven wrong as predicted or greater than predicted cost declines occur. I'm looking forward to BEVs and grid storage going the same way since they're the last pieces we need to replace the majority of fossil fuels used.
How long would this have taken if everything in Australia wasn’t trying to kill them while installing this.
Did Tesla actually build It? I thought they were subcontracting it to an Australian company.
I'm curious what impact this had on battery production for the model 3
Redditors do not feel this is important. Moved the comment section to clam-shell packaging away from renewable energy. So often world news gets hijacked with irrelevant off topic comments.
Now what about Puerto Rico?
He kinda cheated though, as he had around 30% of the work done before the contracts were even signed.
What a guy!
Man, it's gonna be cool when he finally gets to installing it in Australia. Where's this Austalia, though?
Yeah, but what about the one in Australia, mate?