Puerto Rico Prepares

[orthoclad]

https://grist.org/solutions/puerto-rico-town-celebrates-first-of-its-kind-solar-microgrid/

Puerto Rico town celebrates ‘first-of-its-kind’ solar microgrid

Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, is celebrating a milestone this week as it completes the final phase in a project to boost its energy resiliency. The community’s 17,600 residents now host the archipelago’s first cooperatively managed solar microgrid — a network of photovoltaic panels and battery storage units that will use renewable energy to keep the lights on and power flowing during a power outage.

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Business owners and residents will run the microgrid through a nonprofit called the nonprofit Community Solar Energy Association of Adjuntas, which will sell electricity to the commonwealth’s grid through a power purchase agreement. Money saved by not buying power from Puerto Rico’s main power company will support maintaining the microgrid and starting new community projects, according to the Honnold Foundation.

The system was built in response to Puerto Rico’s increasingly severe hurricanes and the prolonged power outages they have caused for Adjuntas residents — some of whom have gone without electricity for as long as 11 months. Last fall, Hurricane Fiona destroyed half of Puerto Rico’s transmission lines and distribution infrastructure, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people. The damage came even as the archipelago’s power struggled to recover from similar destruction caused five years earlier by Hurricane Maria. Beyond the risk from extreme storms, Puerto Rico’s gas-fired power plants face ongoing risks from earthquakes.

Vulture capitalists and debt-vampires are doing their best to wreck and depopulate Puerto Rico so the wealthy can buy up another Caribbean playground, but the people of this US colony are not giving up.

We should follow their example and create microgrids all over the US, a far better strategy than mining yet more petrochemicals. Here's a study on microgrids. It analyzed the microgrid economy in California and Puerto Rico.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5472abbae4b0859145039552/t/6193d0e801c64e39c1662e1d/1637077225523/CSI+Final+Report_FINAL+%2811-16-21%29.pdf

Large petrochemical projects generally have a burst of jobs during construction, then only a few maintenance jobs. The economic benefits flow like oil to the already-rich, like the record profits the oiligarchs made during "inflation", which was 50% created by artificial price gouging. The external costs of global heating, storms, fires, droughts, toxic petrochemical pollution (see East Palestine), plastic pollution, and stochastic problems such as novel diseases e.g. Candida auris are all born by the public at large and do not figure into balance sheets. On the other hand, investment into projects such as microgrids yields immediate economic benefits, without most of the external costs to the public. The study above gives numbers for California microgrids:

Investment in renewable microgrid assets in California is forecast to create over 166,000 jobs by 2030 and generate over $22 billion in GDP.

There is far more detail in the link above.

166,000 jobs. In just one state.

Why are we wasting time and capital resources digging further into a fatal petrochemical hole? We have the technology, resources, and labor power to build tough, resilient, clean power grids. Puerto Rico is showing us how to be free of vampires.

Casa Pueblo and the Honnold Foundation will inaugurate the microgrid on Saturday with a community-wide celebration, including a festive “Marcha del Sol” through downtown. Massol-Deyá said he wants the event to make “a political statement” to get more of Puerto Rico off fossil fuels.

“What we are doing with the microgrid is a reference for what can and should be done in other municipalities in Puerto Rico,” he told me. “We can change our energy system, it can be done — we have shown that it can be done.”

[2naSalit]

1. I've been arguing for...

Point source power generation for a long time, since at least 2000. It would solve major power failures and make them localized.

[orthoclad]

2. A grid with distributed generation nodes

is more robust and resilient than a highly centralized grid.

[Caribbeans]

3. Great post, Microgrids are the future

And according to some, emerging tech may make it so a place like Africa won't need a US Style National grid. While providing jobs and clean energy.

Here's a 3 kW Horizon Fuel Cell that can power some of these new MicroGrids. 3 kW can be scaled up to whatever is needed.

Here's a good example of a Microgrid in Northern California that won't be affected next time PG&E fails.

https://sefmicrogrid.com

Stone Edge Farm, a 16-acre Eden located just west of the city of Sonoma, California, is home to the McQuown family

[orthoclad]

4. Interesting

Methanol fuel cell, eh? Easier to store in small quantities than hydrogen. All you need is a still (grin).