The Puerto Rican Community Taking Energy Resilience Into Its Own Hands

When Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico in 2017, its already fragile electrical grid collapsed. Since then, the island has struggled to modernize and rebuild a more resilient grid. A New Year’s Eve power outage last year left most of the island in a blackout, underscoring the ongoing vulnerabilities of the energy infrastructure.

Damage from the hurricane left the remote village of Castañer isolated for months, and some areas of the community lacked electricity for up to a year. The local hospital was the last medical institution in Puerto Rico to have electricity restored after enduring at least five emergency generator breakdowns.

Now, Castañer residents are taking matters into their own hands. In collaboration with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, they recently drafted a Community Energy Resilience Plan that establishes the necessary steps to build local energy resilience and mitigate weaknesses caused by natural disasters or electrical grid disruptions. 

“In a place like Puerto Rico, where a large portion of the population struggles with grid reliability, we need to step back and engage stakeholders at all levels,” Carlos Alberto Velázquez López, program director at the council, told TriplePundit. “The key question we need to ask is: Given that it may take decades to bring the grid up to standard — though it shouldn’t — and considering our continued vulnerability to climate-induced disasters, how do we prioritize essential power needs?”

Community-driven solutions like the Castañer resilience plan could be the answer. Because Puerto Rico’s power grid underperforms so much compared with the national average, there is a strong case for implementing pilot microgrids, Velázquez said. These are essentially small, independent electrical grids that distribute electricity for the local area, often with energy generated from nearby renewables or generators.

Puerto Rico has a significant amount of distributed energy resources — like solar panels, batteries and microgrids — that create an opportunity to enhance resilience and demonstrate the effectiveness of localized power management, he said.

“A community-based, standalone microgrid system could be developed along specific distribution lines, with a single point of connection to the main grid,” Velázquez said. “This would allow local communities, in collaboration with experts and available resources, to manage and improve power reliability. At this point, it can’t get any worse, so it’s a perfect testing ground for innovative solutions.”

The Community Energy Resilience Plan builds on an existing solar microgrid in Castañer that provides electricity to some of the town’s buildings during emergencies. The new plan highlights energy-related vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, the community’s desired electrical system, and the importance opportunities for local residents to learn and participate. The planning process itself included frequent conversation with locals across the community, as a critical part of building energy resilience is community input and ownership.

Elizabeth Cruz Torres, a member of the committee of community members that helped develop the resilience plan, told 3p that she immediately thought improving energy stability would benefit the community when she first heard of the plan to do so.

“Being an isolated community, we are more vulnerable and in need of help. For these reasons, we have to look for alternatives to improve solar energy,” Cruz said. “We do not want the entire island to go through what happened to Castañer.”  

Community ownership of the resilience plan is important because it demonstrates that Castañer has “managed to overcome all these situations and obstacles,” Cruz said. “We do not want to be completely dependent on government agencies … We want to have the ability to help our people during emergencies like the one we have experienced.”

Hurricane Maria sparked a shift in public perception of electricity away from a one-way connection with the power grid, Velázquez said. 

“You turn the switch, you expect for the light bulbs to turn on and for the electricity to run,” he said, describing a one-way connection. “Then at the end of the month, you get the bill, and you complain about how expensive it is, you pay, and then you start the cycle over again.”

Instead, Puerto Ricans increasingly view this as a two-way relationship, where individuals also take ownership of energy conservation, critical load management, and local energy generation for resilience, Velázquez said. 

Education is key to this transition, but financing remains a major hurdle, Velázquez said. He cited the recent launch of Puerto Rico’s Green Energy Trust as a potential solution. The aim is to evolve the trust into a green bank to provide equitable energy financing for the island’s low-to-moderate-income population. 

The Community Energy Resilience Plan is part of an initiative sponsored by the United States Department of Energy. Velázquez said he is concerned renewable energy initiatives like this could be a target of federal funding cuts by the Trump administration. Thus far, the program remains in place, and Velázquez remains cautiously optimistic.

“This plan was created under an administration that supported community empowerment in energy justice and resilience,” Velázquez said. “Now, we must implement it under an administration that is not as friendly to those goals. This presents a bigger challenge, but I believe in Castañer’s ability to push forward.”

That belief stems from a storied past of community-led efforts.

“Castañer has a strong history of solving problems, whether it’s housing needs, supporting agricultural workers, reopening schools, or creating community-run hospitals, this community knows how to come together and make things happen,” Velázquez said. “Now, we’ve added energy resilience to that history. I have no doubt that Castañer will be a model for how to get this done.”