Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to fix South Australia's energy issues within 100 days, claiming that he would do it for free if he failed to meet the deadline.
The offer comes after several blackouts due to storms in the Australian state that have caused price spikes, with local energy firms struggling to meet demand following damage to infrastructure.
SolarCity is an energy company that Musk founded with his cousin Lyndon Rive. The company merged with Tesla, the car company which Musk is the CEO of. SolarCity makes solar solutions for areas which can store up energy during the day and feed that back into an area's grid.
Rive told Australian news site AFR that the company could install the 100 to 300 megawatt per hour of battery storage that South Australia requires to stop power shortages and blackouts. Rive added that this could be achieved within 100 days.
Surprised at the comments, Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australian founder of Nasdaq-listed tech firm Atlassian, which is worth over $6.3 billion, asked Musk on Twitter if he was serious, to which the Tesla boss replied that he was.
Sarah Hanson-Young, a senator for South Australia for the Greens party, then reached out to Musk asking to talk.
Rive said that the required energy would be ready if the region needed it.
"We don't have 300MWh sitting there ready to go but I'll make sure there are," he told the AFR, adding that there has been increased production at the firm's Gigafactory in Nevada.
Cannon-Brookes asked Musk to give him seven days to sort out "politics and funding" then requested a price quote. Musk replied saying that it would cost $250 per kWh for 100MWh-plus systems, adding that additional fees like shipping, tariffs and installation would vary by country and are "beyond our control".
