#Elon musk puerto rico micro grids install#

To that it must be added that the governor and the U.S. “Absent substantial federal funding for the rebuilding effort, the Energy Resiliency Working Group recommendations cannot be implemented,” Rosselló alleged in the plan he submitted to the Board. The governor has said that, given the slow arrival of the funds promised by the federal government for the reconstruction, the work done by PREPA and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers is limited to restoring the electrical system destroyed by the hurricane. Fluence is in talks with the Fiscal Control Board and PREPA to offer an industrial-level storage system, the company confirmed to the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, for Spanish acronym.) The development of energy storage infrastructure could represent a market with investments of more than $250 million in five years, according to the fiscal plan.īut the island is still far from moving into a resilient model.

#Elon musk puerto rico micro grids install#

The first two have shown interest in participating in a call to install batteries to support an economic development project in the facilities of the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in the municipality of Ceiba, the State Office of Public Energy Policy (OEPPE) confirmed. Tesla (owned by inventor Elon Musk), German company Sonnen, and Fluence (AES-Siemens), are in competition for the energy storage market in Puerto Rico. All these entities claim that batteries and small electrical networks are the best way. They created a plan to build a system that can survive categories 4 and 5 hurricanes-the most extreme. The same is proposed by the Puerto Rico Energy Resiliency Working Group, formed by the federal, local, and State of New York governments, along with private organizations such as ConEdison, which was hired to support the restoration of the electrical system. That plan was amended in April 2018 by the Board, but kept those measures and was imposed on the agency. Congress so that the Commonwealth pays its debt. Ricardo Rosselló to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, the federal entity appointed by the U.S. These measures of resilience, the small networks and energy storage with batteries, were contemplated by PREPA’s fiscal plan submitted on Maby Gov.

Until the premonitions of what could happen came to be after hurricane Maria caused the second largest blackout in the history of the world, as economic research firm Rhodium Group documented in 2018. These systems, as well as the installation of energy storage centers, had been until then mere proposals by experts who talked about improving the electrical system to avoid disasters in the future. While microgrids follow a model on an even smaller scale connecting one house to another. And, when Maria arrived, it worked.Ī mini power grid allows the system to generate, transmit and distribute electricity near the point of consumption, in urban areas and towns. At that time, there was no talk of small networks or resilience, but the need showed them the model. (Photo by Jimmy Crespo | Center for Investigative Journalism)Īt the request of Mayagüez Mayor José Guillermo Rodríguez, the system was designed with the collaboration of the municipal administration, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the central government 20 years ago, after Hurricane Georges left the town in darkness. Hydro-Gas Power Plant in Mayagüez, from where key areas of the town were energized after the hurricane. In the marquee of the theater, located steps from the square, a message gave testimony of the situation: “Mayagüez is up and standing, Puerto Rico rises.” To the west of Puerto Rico, the town of Mayagüez had electricity downtown and two fully energized hospitals only four days after the hurricane. “Everyone in town asked the same thing,” Pérez said, “‘Why don’t they turn on the wind turbines, why don’t they turn on the wind turbines?’” Ten days after the atmospheric phenomenon, still without electricity, her parents had to leave the island. Time ran against her mother’s health, who needed to turn on the refrigerator to safe-keep the insulin with which she treats her diabetes. Despite having survived gusts of 155 miles per hour, the devices looked like useless figures, symbols of the lack of adaptation of Puerto Rico’s electrical system to climate change. Zory Pérez went out to look for her parents after Hurricane María, and saw that the blades of the wind turbines erected on the agricultural plains of the town of Santa Isabel were halted.