Rebuilding Puerto Rico’s Grid With Batteries and Solar Would Be the Cheapest Option
Three months after Hurricane Maria, there are large swaths of Puerto Rico that still don’t have power. It took two months to get half the island’s residents power again — and hundreds of thousands of people are still without grid access as the holidays approach.
After a slow start, there are mainland crews there working day and night to restore electricity. They’ve been making progress, but the situation is still dire.
In the aftermath of the disaster, we’re finally getting a sense of what a resilient Puerto Rican grid could look like. The Puerto Rico Energy Commission recently asked for ideas about how to rebuild the grid, and some of the biggest heavy-hitters in the industry responded.
In this week’s episode, we’re talking with Chris Shelton, the chief technology officer at the global electricity provider AES. He’ll describe the company’s vision for a network of solar-storage mini-grids that would be the most competitive way to make Puerto Rico more resilient from future storms.
This podcast is sponsored by Schneider Electric. Now, you can reap the benefits of a microgrid with no upfront capital through the new microgrid-as-a-service business model from Schneider Electric.
