Tesla CEO’s Australian Friend Confident On Meeting One-Week Deadline

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Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Australian software firm Atlassian Corp Plc, appears well on track to meet his one-week deadline to arrange political and financial support for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Cannon-Brookes and Musk, who have a plan to fix the power crisis in South Australia, are among the most talked-about corporate duos nowadays.

Tesla CEO getting political support

The two first communicated regarding the matter on March 9, when Musk revealed his intention of solving the power crisis in just 100 days. The challenge wasn’t big for Musk, who immediately offered a solution at a price that’s nearly half of the usual cost for the system he suggested. At the same time, he offered a money-back guarantee if he fails.

After Musk’s commitment, Cannon-Brookes joined in on the plan, saying, “You’re on mate. Give me seven days to try and sort out politics & funding.”

After five days, the publicity that the duo got is starting to show positive results. Cannon-Brookes has told Reuters that Musk already received a call from two Australian state leaders and the prime minister.

“I don’t know what the definition of ‘politics sorted out’ was, there wasn’t really a plan there, but we’ve now had the various premiers and the prime minister talking to Elon on the phone talking about storage,” he told Reuters.

“Good chance” to address energy problems

South Australia, the country’s fourth-largest state, has faced a string of power outages, including a blackout that disturbed industry in the state for more than ten days. Such power issues raised fears of more outages due to limited energy supply.

Cannon-Brookes is, however, pretty confident in Tesla’s ability to fix Australia’s power crisis. He told ABC on Tuesday morning that he believes the state has a “good chance” to resolve its energy problems through the use of Tesla’s battery-powered solution.

Will Musk keep his word this time?

Tesla’s CEO has been known for making far-fetched promises, but this latest one could actually meet his deadline. The company took just 90 days to construct a similar plant in Ontario, California. Hence, this deadline might turn out to be real as well.

Intermittency is a major problem with renewable energy, and it is believed that batteries will offer a feasible solution. Bloomberg claims that the batteries manufactured at Tesla’s massive Nevada Gigafactory have been built to “enable so-called ‘load-shifting,'” which is discharging when prices and demand are high and charging when the demand for electricity is low.

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