Puerto Rico Microgrids Pass the Test
There were various Puerto Rico microgrids setup after Hurricane Maria, and they have been an absolute blessing for an island that simply can’t catch a break.
On January 7, 2020, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked the island, followed on January 11 by another 5.9-magnitude quake, leading to massive power outages. The earthquakes damaged a power plant that generates 25% of the island’s electricity, and according to power authority PREPA, could result in the plant being offline for up to a year. Ouch.
How the Puerto Rico Microgrids Came to the Rescue
Following Hurricane Maria, Tesla, Sunrun, and other companies donated batteries capable of storing solar power to critical locations like hospitals, fire stations, community centers, and water treatment plants. Additionally, some of the more affluent households on the island installed their own solar-powered microgrids to keep power flowing at their homes – in fact, the number of rooftop solar installations on the island nearly doubled the first year after Hurricane Maria.
As it turns out, these solar-powered microgrids have allowed these locations to be permanently off the grid. And unless the microgrids themselves get damaged, there seems to be little risk of them ever going offline, irrespective of what is happening to the grid as a whole.
This benefit was expected, which is why officials planned to deploy numerous Puerto Rico microgrids in strategic locations following Maria. Unfortunately, this is extremely expensive to do, and has been hindered by a delay in the $42 billion in federal disaster aid appropriated by Congress.
That said, once the appropriate funding has been secured, it is likely that microgrids will be built at a large scale across the island, and when this happens it will essentially serve as a case study for similar initiatives in other places in the continental U.S., such as California.
The bottom line is that, despite the island’s bad luck in recent years, the mass deployment of Puerto Rico microgrids is likely to not only improve the island’s power reliability, but also serve as a model that can help other disaster-prone locations improve their reliability as well.
