Puerto Rico’s community-owned solar energy: various to frequent blackouts
By Maggy DONALDSON
Adjuntas, Puerto Rico (AFP) July 25, 2025
Enid Medina Guzman all the time has candles available — not for creating ambiance, however as a result of one of many blackouts that plague Puerto Rico might strike at any time.
However she is hopeful the lingering hardship will quickly be a factor of the previous: photo voltaic panels are being put in on her dwelling as a part of a group program selling power independence.
At her home nestled excessive within the mountains of the luxurious tropical forests of the archipelago’s central metropolis Adjuntas, “it rains rather a lot and when there’s a bit wind, the facility goes out actually rapidly,” Medina Guzman instructed AFP.
She has lived in Adjuntas, which has a inhabitants of about 20,000, nearly all her life. She stated blackouts have all the time been a characteristic.
“Generally it is at evening when it is tremendous sizzling, and you may’t sleep, you may’t relaxation,” the 60-year-old stated. “It is tough.”
Puerto Rico is a Caribbean territory of greater than three million those that has been underneath US management since 1898.
Its continual infrastructure woes have been exacerbated by 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria, which razed the island’s already deteriorating energy grid.
After the huge storm, it took roughly 11 months to revive energy throughout the island.
{The electrical} grid went non-public in June 2021 in an obvious effort to resolve the issue of perennial blackouts.
However outages persist: this previous yr, Puerto Rico skilled large blackouts in April and likewise on New 12 months’s Eve.
“It isn’t regular,” Medina Guzman stated, as a crew put in the battery that may quickly retailer captured power from the solar.
– ‘Fingers of the individuals’ –
Like in every single place in Puerto Rico, Adjuntas went darkish throughout Maria — however within the metropolis’s major sq., a pink, Twenties-era home was a beacon of sunshine.
It was Casa Pueblo, the nucleus of a grassroots non-profit centered on ecological safety and group assist.
It grew to become a haven within the storm’s aftermath: the photo voltaic panels on its roof meant Casa Pueblo had treasured energy. Individuals might cost their digital gadgets, and crucially plug in medical tools like oxygen machines.
Cell towers and energy traces have been down, however Casa Pueblo’s group radio station nonetheless functioned, turning into a significant supply of knowledge within the mountain city.
Casa Pueblo got here into being in 1980 — the brainchild of a residents group whose authentic mission was to thwart a sequence of deliberate open-pit mines within the area.
They have been profitable. Through the years, the group bloomed right into a mannequin of bottom-up power independence, on an island ceaselessly hampered by financial disaster and pure catastrophe.
“Our aspiration is not only a technological transition away from fossil fuels to photo voltaic. Sure, we have to produce clear and renewable power, however we’re aspiring in the direction of a change — a simply, eco-social transition,” stated Casa Pueblo’s director Arturo Massol Deya, a biologist by coaching.
“Meaning the power infrastructure being within the fingers of the individuals,” added Massol Deya, whose dad and mom have been the group’s authentic founders.
– ‘Path to alter’ –
Amongst Casa Pueblo’s efforts is sustaining a group photo voltaic belt that provides weak populations management over their very own power.
The group additionally has distributed photo voltaic lamps and photo voltaic fridges, particularly in rural communities.
Casa Pueblo has thus far helped set up photo voltaic panels on practically 300 properties, with over 400 initiatives in complete together with companies. Massol Deya instructed AFP these initiatives are primarily funded via grassroots donations and philanthropy.
Their microgrids — a localized power system — are interconnected and self-sufficient.
And web metering — a billing mechanism that credit customers for extra energy produced from renewable techniques — permits Casa Pueblo’s heart to promote again what it would not use.
That’s significantly significant provided that common Puerto Ricans pay greater than double the worth for electrical energy than mainland US residents, in response to US Power Info Administration information.
“The standard mannequin is a unilateral, exploitative, monopolistic, dictatorial mannequin,” Massol Deya stated.
“They determine the worth of gas and whether or not they give it to you or not. Generally they fail and may’t present the service,” he stated.
“This power insecurity interprets to many points — properly, not anymore.”
Roughly 10 % of Puerto Rican households presently have photo voltaic panels, in response to the power authority, a quantity that displays households with net-metering agreements. There isn’t any publicly obtainable information for buildings that function off-grid.
Sergio Rivera Rodriguez is a part of a crew of educational researchers finding out the general public well being impression of power safety on populations like these in Adjuntas.
He instructed AFP the Casa Pueblo mannequin could possibly be profitable elsewhere.
“I feel it is making a distinction — it is after all only one municipality,” he stated. However “structural adjustments take years.”
Casa Pueblo features above all, Massol Deya stated, as a result of it’s a social program that fosters communal management of assets.
“The individuals are doing it,” he stated. “That is the trail to alter.”
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