The New Tesla Is Already Up To Great Things: Check Out This 100% Solar Powered Island

After months of back-and-forth chatter, Tesla Motors Inc TSLA finally completed the acquisition of SolarCity Corp SCTY on Monday. And, the new, $28.5 billion market cap Tesla is already up to great things.

According to a SolarCity blog post published Tuesday, the island of Ta’u in American Samoa, previously powered entirely by diesel generators, will now get almost all of its energy from a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid.

Specifics

The 5,328 solar panels and 60-Tesla-Powerpack microgrid provides 1.4 megawatts of solar generation capacity and 6 megawatt hours of battery storage. With just seven hours of daylight, the system can power the whole island for three straight days.

Source: SolarCity

“It’s always sunny out here, and harvesting that energy from the sun will make me sleep a lot more comfortably at night, just knowing I’ll be able to serve my customers,” said local merchant Keith Ahsoon.

Analysts' Outlook

Analysts believe Tesla can expect more projects like this one, which was funded by the American Samoa Economic Development Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, in the future. In fact, just recently, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry argued that President-elect Donald Trump’s positions on American manufacturing puts the carmaker and solar energy company in a unique position to benefit from his policies.