Tesla, others help Puerto Ricans go solar amid turmoil
ADJUNTAS, PUERTO RICO » Ten months after Hurricane Maria, Adjuntas still loses power any time a heavy rain or wind pounds the rickety power lines feeding this town high in the central mountains of Puerto Rico.
That leaves its 20,000 people once again in the dark, without light, fresh water or air conditioning — except for a handful of homes and businesses glowing in the night thanks to solar energy.
The people of Adjuntas call those places “cucubanos,” an indigenous Puerto Rican firefly. They’re part of a small but growing movement to provide the U.S. territory with sustainable, renewable energy independent of the decrepit power grid.
A scattering of hardware stores, barbershops and corner stores across the island are embracing solar energy, trying to wean themselves off a state- owned power company that remains heavily dependent on imported petroleum. The numbers remain small — a few dozen or hundreds out of millions of power users— but power industry officials and environmentalists are closely watching this as a test of whether Puerto Rico can make a large-scale switch to renewable, off-grid energy.
Currently, renewables represent 4 percent of generation at Puerto Rico’s power company, against a U. S. national average of 15 percent, so it likely will be years before solar could account for a significant share of Puerto Rico power.
Even so, “Puerto Rico can be an experimental workshop for solar and wind,” Rep. Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat, said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
While Adjuntas is dotted with solar-powered islands, a community of 12 homes in the mountain town of Las Piedras still lacks central power and is operating exclusively on solar energy provided by Tesla, the hightech maker of electric cars and other power products. It installed 160 solar panels on a plot of land owned by resident Jose Santana.
Santana, an electronics technician, said he loves the smartphone app that lets him monitor the solar-charged Tesla batteries. He said the government should consider going solar and dumping the current “archaic” power grid.
“This can pull us out of the mess we’re in,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with having a vision of the future. It’s time to start making changes.”
As in Las Piedras, some solar users are relying on corporations and nonprofit groups to donate the expensive equipment. Others have become so exasperated with continuing outages that they are taking it upon themselves to install their own systems.
“I’m a musician. I have a salsa orchestra. I know nothing about electricity,” said Felix Torres, who recently installed nine solar panels on the roof of his home, perched on a mountain in the eastern city of Caguas. “I was afraid of getting electrocuted and damaging equipment worth thousands of dollars. ... But we should not depend so much on the government. They already have their hands full.”