{"id":695659,"date":"2022-06-11T10:01:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-11T10:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=572890"},"modified":"2022-06-11T10:01:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T10:01:00","slug":"puerto-ricans-are-powering-their-own-rooftop-solar-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/06\/11\/puerto-ricans-are-powering-their-own-rooftop-solar-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Ricans are powering their own rooftop solar\u00a0boom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story was originally published by Canary Media.<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee este art\u00edculo en espa\u00f1ol aqu\u00ed.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bright yellow building with bold green trim hums with activity in Caguas, a city sprawled across a mountain valley south of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In a spacious kitchen, volunteers chop vegetables and cook rice for community meals. Down the hall, visitors browse racks of free and discounted produce, canned beans, and bottles of oil. Outside, beneath a large metal awning, retirees soak in calming music as they take part in a stress-relief workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The community services on offer here at the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, or Mutual Support Center, are made possible by the 24 solar panels mounted on the rooftop. Two lithium-ion batteries the size of suitcases are kept in a windowless storage room, allowing the center to stay open on cloudy days and in the evenings. The building doesn\u2019t use any electricity from the utility grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly five years ago, after Hurricane Maria<\/a> tore a path of devastation across the United States territory and all but destroyed Puerto Rico\u2019s electricity system, residents in Caguas reclaimed what had for decades been an abandoned Social Security office. They ripped out moldy carpet, scrubbed the walls and began providing food and supplies to neighbors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was a space that wasn\u2019t serving the people, and now the community has taken it over,\u201d Marisel Robles, one of the center\u2019s organizers, says on a muggy day in early May, just weeks before the start of the next Atlantic hurricane season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robles guides me up a thin metal ladder to the rooftop of the one-story building, pushing aside tree branches sagging with brown seed pods. Sa\u00fal Gonz\u00e1lez, a volunteer and local solar installer, joins our expedition. The three rows of solar panels form a \u200b\u201cmosaic\u201d of different makes and models, all of them donated by nonprofit organizations, he explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ra\u00fal
Ra\u00fal Gonz\u00e1lez, left, and Marisel Robles help maintain the solar system on the Mutual Support Center\u2019s rooftop in Caguas, Puerto Rico.\n Maria Gallucci \/ Canary Media<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With 6 kilowatts of solar capacity and 30 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, the system can typically meet the center\u2019s power needs. Occasionally, members cut the lights and fans during the day to save electricity for an evening dance class. Still, Robles says it\u2019s better than running expensive, polluting diesel generators or depending on the island\u2019s electric grid \u2014 which, despite years of post-hurricane repairs, remains prone to routine outages<\/a>, sweeping blackouts, and frequent voltage surges that fry people\u2019s appliances. In early April, the entire island lost grid power for three days after an aging electric breaker caught fire<\/a> on the southern coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes, we hear the \u200b\u2018boom\u2019 of people turning on their diesel generators, and that\u2019s how we know the power went out in town, because here we still have power,\u201d Robles says, looking out over the tops of neighboring buildings. \u200b\u201cFor us, it\u2019s like a victory every day this happens, because we feel like we did something right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mutual Support Center is not unique in its ability to produce its own clean energy. A rising number of Puerto Ricans are installing solar panels and batteries on their homes and businesses, fed up with the unstable electric grid, high electricity bills, and the state-owned utility\u2019s reliance on fossil fuels. As of January 2022, some 42,000 rooftop solar systems<\/a> were enrolled in the island\u2019s net-metering program<\/a> \u2014 more than eight times the number at the end of 2016, the year before Hurricane Maria struck the island, according to utility data. Thousands more systems are operating but are not officially counted because, like the center\u2019s unit, they aren\u2019t connected to the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spearheaded largely by residents, business owners, and philanthropies, the grassroots solar movement sweeping the island is happening despite headwinds from the territory\u2019s centralized utility \u2014 which claims it\u2019s working to advance the island\u2019s clean energy goals but continues investing in fossil fuels. Solar proponents say that, for the technology to reach most of Puerto Rico\u2019s 3.2 million people, the government and its utility will need to more fully participate in what has largely been a bottom-up energy transformation. With billions of federal recovery dollars set to flow to Puerto Rico, they argue that now is the time for public policies and investments that shift the island away from an outdated model of large, far-flung power plants to one that supplies clean electricity close to where people need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The vulnerability of Puerto Rico\u2019s centralized system became painfully evident in September 2017, when the island was hit by two consecutive disasters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hurricane Irma narrowly skirted the island on September 7, leaving more than a third of all households without power. Many residents still didn\u2019t have electricity when, on September 20, Hurricane Maria barreled ashore. The storm carved a diagonal 100-mile path from southeast to northwest, mowing down the island\u2019s transmission lines and inundating infrastructure. Maria damaged, destroyed or otherwise compromised 80 percent<\/a> of the island\u2019s grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without electricity, daily life ground to a halt. Schools shuttered, banks closed, supermarket food spoiled, and drinking water supplies slowed to a trickle. One study estimated<\/a> that more than 4,600 people died as a result of the storm, including those who couldn\u2019t operate their oxygen machines, refrigerate vital medications like insulin, or stay sufficiently cool in the sweltering heat. In some places, power wasn\u2019t restored for more than a year after the hurricane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaria made life very difficult. It was like a new beginning for many of us,\u201d recalls Atala P\u00e9rez, who lives in Caguas and volunteers at the Mutual Support Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P\u00e9rez says she went more than six months without any electricity in her home. With no fan or air conditioner, she spent many restless nights in the sticky heat, slapping away mosquitos. Tired of waiting in line for eight hours to buy a bag of ice, she grew used to drinking tepid tap water. She could still cook but couldn\u2019t keep any food in the refrigerator. \u200b\u201cI didn\u2019t have any backup power,\u201d she says, standing inside the yellow building\u2019s makeshift supermarket. \u200b\u201cI was simply without electricity, and I had to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ferocity of Hurricane Maria would\u2019ve battered any electric grid. But Puerto Rico\u2019s power system was uniquely unprepared for the disasters that struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After years of economic recession, the island\u2019s government had amassed $72 billion in debt. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, the state-owned utility, had filed for bankruptcy months earlier. The economic crisis compounded decades of documented missteps<\/a>, neglect, and ill-advised practices at PREPA. With its workforce slashed in half, the utility had delayed routine maintenance. Warehouses that should\u2019ve stored spare equipment for use in emergencies instead had empty shelves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Maria\u2019s aftermath, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency allocated $3.2 billion to restore power to the island. Utility crews worked tirelessly to install concrete towers where wooden poles had snapped like twigs and to string up wires where old ones lay entangled on the ground. Yet the problems that plagued Puerto Rico before the storms \u2014 mismanagement, corruption<\/a>, the island\u2019s challenging geography \u2014 ultimately served to slow and complicate recovery efforts. Much of the work since Maria has focused on resurrecting and extending the life of the existing grid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Puerto Rico signed a 15-year deal that transferred the publicly operated transmission and distribution system to Luma Energy, a private consortium of Canadian and U.S. companies that now operates the grid and handles reconstruction. PREPA remains in charge of producing and procuring electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its latest quarterly report<\/a>, Luma said it made significant improvements in the first three months of this year, replacing hundreds of aging utility poles and enrolling more than 21,000 rooftop solar customers in net metering, a program in which utilities pay solar-equipped households for the electricity their panels supply to the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, the consortium is facing widespread backlash from residents, who blame it for rising electricity bills and continued outages. In San Juan, thousands of protestors have marched past Luma\u2019s headquarters and the governor\u2019s mansion holding signs declaring \u200b\u201cFuera Luma<\/em>\u201d or \u200b\u201cOut with Luma.\u201d Similar posters are plastered on billboards near Luma\u2019s office in Mayag\u00fcez, on the island\u2019s western coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Puerto Ricans, rooftop solar systems offer a way out of an endless cycle of disruptions and disappointment. Energy experts estimate that thousands of new solar arrays are hooked up every month. As of January, households in particular had installed at least 225 megawatts of combined solar capacity, equal to about 5.5 percent of total residential electricity demand, according to a recent report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n