(Photo: Damaged distribution lines in the rural area of Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Credit: Jeff Miller for Western Area Power, Flickr Creative Commons)Regulators in Puerto Rico have introduced a clean energy bill that would put the island on the path to getting 100% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2050.
The bill calls for 20% renewable electricity by 2025, 50% by 2040, and 100% by 2050. California recently passed a similar bill, with a goal of 100% renewables by 2045. Hawaii passed a similar law in 2015, and this June, added another law with the goal of becoming fully carbon neutral.
As Hurricane Maria illustrated, the island’s electric grid is fragile and, one year after the storm, some generating services aren’t expected to be in service before 2019. This, plus other issue, including aging and inefficient electrical systems, has pushed lawmakers to propose the ambitious renewable energy plan.
As Inside Climate News reports:
Puerto Rico's electricity needs are currently met largely by burning oil and coal, which, taken together, supply 62% of the territory's energy needs, according to the utility. The territory gets just 4% of its electricity from renewables, including hydropower, despite an earlier mandate that 12% of electricity come from renewable sources by 2015.
The current proposed legislation calls for ending coal power generation on the island by 2028. Though environmentalists have praised the proposal, others are unsure about how Puerto Rico will pay for a shift in infrastructure twice over the next decade.
Following Hurricane Maria, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló were in talks about deploying utility-scale battery systems along with solar capacity to rebuild the island’s power grid.
Musk and Rosselló initially connected through Twitter when the Tesla head executive was asked directly about rebuilding the island’s electricity system with independent solar and battery systems.
Also in the wake of Hurricane Maria, Fairbanks Morse, an engine manufacturing company, announced that it delivered its PoweReliability-as-a-Service platform to a Fortune 500 company in Puerto Rico. The installation provided a dual fuel combined heat and power (CHP) microgrid with approximately 10 megawatts of capacity.
The PoweReliability-as-a-Service offering was installed with advanced software and condition-based maintenance support so power generation can be monitored in real time to deliver on specified fuel and reliability guarantees. As an open platform, it can be customized to include the additional integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) including renewable baseloads like solar, wind, or energy storage in the future.
