Weary of Power Outages, Puerto Ricans Find Solace in Solar
From families to factories, demand rises for renewable energy separate from the unreliable electric grid
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Rafael Guzmán and Leinaí Romero spent more than four months without power after Hurricane Maria struck last September, relying on a generator to run a refrigerator, two fans and cellphone chargers. When the married couple learned in April they were having a baby, they made a pledge: “We aren’t going through that again.”
They installed 16 solar panels on the roof of their home in Caguas, south of San Juan, and a battery that charges during the day and allows them to run appliances and a TV at night, said Mr. Guzmán, a 29-year-old accountant.
With a financing plan to cover the $21,000 price tag, their monthly payment of $220 is about the same as their average electric bill before the switch.
Solar panels installed by New Energy Consultants & Contractors at the Profamilias health clinic in San Juan.
Photo:
Jose Jimenez Tirado for the Wall Street Journal
Residents and businesses in Puerto Rico increasingly are investing in renewable-energy technologies, mainly solar, to guard against power outages from the island’s still-rickety electric grid. Solar panel and battery makers like
Tesla
Inc.,
Sunrun
Inc.
and Sonnen are pushing into the market. As Puerto Rico seeks to wean itself off imported fuels to generate power, it is emerging as a proving ground for renewable energy.
There has been “exponential growth for the solar and storage industries in Puerto Rico,” said Adam Gentner, Sonnen’s director of business development and Latin American expansion.
A year ago, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s electrical-supply system. Toppled electricity poles and lines lie in Humacao, Puerto Rico, last September.
Photo:
Carlos Giusti/Associated Press
The renewable-energy push comes as the U.S. territory’s debt-ridden public power utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, grapples with its future. Last year’s hurricanes devastated the system. All of Prepa’s nearly 1.6 million customers lost power after Hurricane Maria, and only last month did the utility announce it had restored power to all of Puerto Rico.
Even before that, the island’s electric grid was vulnerable to disruptions. Its power plants are nearly 30 years older than the U.S. average and prone to outages at a rate of 12 times the national average, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Puerto Rico depends on imported fuels, mainly petroleum, which alone accounted for nearly half of its electricity production in the fiscal year ended June 2017, with natural gas and coal accounting for most of the remainder, according to the EIA. About 2% of the island’s power came from renewable resources, including solar and wind.
José Ortiz turns off his generator after using it for four hours on July 12 at his home in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, where he hadn’t had power since Hurricane Irma, which hit a couple of weeks before Maria last year. He was given solar lamps this summer.
Photo:
Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/Associated Press
Political and business leaders say the island must boost the role of renewable energy, in part to increase the system’s reliability. In July, Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co., an economic development agency, put out a request for proposals for some of its industrial sites that house large companies like
and
Baxter International
Inc.
It aims to equip the facilities with microgrids—local power systems that can disconnect from the main grid and function autonomously—that include renewable sources.
Homeowners and small- and medium-size businesses are setting up solar systems to supply backup power in the event of an outage. and reduce dependence on the grid. Since Maria, demand for batteries—which allow customers to store solar-generated power—has soared, said Alejandro Uriarte, chief executive of New Energy Consultants & Contractors LLC, a solar installation company in San Juan.
Alejandro Uriarte, CEO of solar-panel installer New Energy Consultants & Contractors, projects his company’s sales will reach $20 million this year, up from $11 million last year.
Photo:
Jose Jimenez Tirado for The Wall Street Journal
“We have not sold a single system without batteries after the hurricane,” said Mr. Uriarte, who projects his company will reach $20 million in sales this year, up from $11 million last year. Customers include pharmaceutical companies, schools and residences.
F&R Construction Group Inc., a builder in San Juan, had invested about $150,000 three years ago to install around 220 solar panels at its headquarters. That reduced the company’s electricity bill to about $4,000 a month from $6,000, said José García, president of Solaora, an F&R subsidiary that installed the system.
“After Maria we saw how vulnerable the system is,” Mr. García said. This year, F&R decided to invest about $20,000 more in a battery set that can power the company’s computer servers overnight in case of a blackout.
Tesla solar panels power a community of 12 homes in the Puerto Rican mountain town of Las Piedras, which didn’t have electricity from the national grid even 10 months after Hurricane Maria.
Photo:
Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/Associated Press
Solar companies say business has increased significantly. Tesla had 662 projects on the island as of April, including one at a water-pumping station on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Since the storm, Sonnen has installed three megawatt hours of battery storage in Puerto Rico, compared with about half a megawatt-hour it had set up before.
Sunrun, one of largest residential solar and storage companies in the U.S., initially teamed up with nonprofit organizations after Maria to outfit fire stations in Puerto Rico with solar systems and batteries. In June, the company began selling its Brightbox home solar and battery service on the island, and says it has trained about 70 locals for sales, operations and installation positions to help Sunrun meet what it says is strong demand for its products.
Puerto Ricans have “put themselves at the leading edge of the energy transition nationwide,” said Chris Rauscher, Sunrun’s director of public policy.
The Centro de Salud Familiar, a health clinic in Arroyo, on the southern coast, struggled after Maria to keep its emergency room running on a generator. Now, the nonprofit Direct Relief is funding a $690,000 solar and battery system that will help power the clinic’s EKG machines, X-ray equipment and refrigerators for medicines.
“It gives us mental peace,” said Rosa Rodríguez, the clinic’s executive director.
Solar panels on the roof of a barber shop that operates with solar energy in Adjuntas.
Photo:
alvin baez/Reuters
Write to Erin Ailworth at Erin.Ailworth@wsj.com and Arian Campo-Flores at arian.campo-flores@wsj.com
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