Rethinking electric power, prompted by politics, disaster
SEATTLE — Lilo Danielle Pozzo, who teaches chemical engineering at the University of Washington, grew up in Puerto Rico. So when Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September, it felt, she said, like a perfect alignment of needs and expertise: Pozzo studies batteries and electrical storage systems at the university’s Clean Energy Institute, and Puerto Rico, a place she loves, had just seen its power grid destroyed.
She led a team from the institute to a remote mountain community called Jayuya that was still completely without power two months after the disaster. “We want to see what we can contribute,” she said.
After interviewing residents about one of their most dire problems — the health implications of power failure for medications and home medical devices — the team installed solar-powered refrigerators in a community center on Thanksgiving. They had been bought with contributions collected in Seattle, and Pozzo returned there to plan next steps with a universitywide committee she had helped put together.
The impulse to help Puerto Rico — an often neglected corner of the nation that has struggled after the storm — rebuild has rippled through many corners of America. But in the world of electricity research, which has staked out a place of geeky global dominance on the West Coast, an equally powerful idea about the island has resonated: It is a chance to work on a blank canvas.
Researchers’ heads have danced with visions of self-sufficient microgrids and solar-harnessed battery systems as they dream of giving Puerto Rico a new power system that is cleaner and less carbon-intensive than the fossil-fuel-dependent one the storm wrecked. The island is becoming an important proving ground for ideas about how low-carbon energy can be practical, both technically and financially.
“The West Coast of the United States has now become the epicenter of innovation and deployment of new energy systems,” said David J. Victor, who teaches energy policy at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s partly an effort to cement leadership around climate change, which is politically very popular,” Victor added. “The election of Don-