Elon Musk was in South Australia last week signing off on a deal to deliver and install the world’s largest grid-scale battery (100MW) and promising to uphold his “100 days or it’s free” pledge.

The technology is great and definitely part of what is the only sensible way forward on energy creation, decentralised energy collection feeding local areas (in this case 30,000 homes) and supplying any excess back to the larger grid.

It’s also speaks to a new era of energy players and a new world of how these projects come to fruition:

“A Twitter challenge laid down by Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and met by Mr Musk on March 10 to “get a system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free”, generated media attention, prompting a phone call between the Tesla founder and the Premier on March 11, and shortly thereafter with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Three days later Mr Weatherill launched the energy plan to combat forecast supply shortfalls this summer, following a statewide blackout last September, and called for expressions of interest to build a 100MW grid-scale battery on March 15.” (The Australian).

In this weeks regular on-air discussions with ABC Drives WA’s Barry Nicholls and ABC Far North’s Kier Shorey, I explore this deal and what’s its broader implications are to energy, infrastructure and the future of business.

ABC Drives WA’s Barry Nicholls, Monday 10th July (6 mins 36 secs)…

ABC Far North’s Kier Shorey, Monday 17th July (10 mins 57 secs)…