Power for Puerto Rico? Twin Cities solar energy consultants see opportunity

Nov. 26--After spending three months this summer helping the United Arab Emirates write procedures for a new nuclear power plant, Peter Reese followed his wife's advice and returned home to the cooler climate of South Minneapolis without a job in hand.

And then, in late September, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and Reese watched in informed disbelief as the federal government promised to rebuild the country's devastated transmission lines and electric grid, one plant at a time, and restore power within a year.

As far as he's concerned, that's not just unrealistic. It's foolhardy.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency "is only there to rebuild things as they were," said Reese, a former Xcel Energy contracts manager who seized on the Puerto Rico opportunity to launch his own renewable energy nonprofit, Energy Releaf, in late September. "And 'as they were' is 40-to-50-year-old petroleum-burning plants sending energy through transmission lines over the mountains."

And it's not working. Two months after Maria made landfall, more than half the U.S. island territory is still without power. Yet even before the hurricane hit, blackouts were common and fuel prices were the second-highest in the nation.

ANSWER IN SOLAR?

Reese points to privately-funded success stories that occurred where federal and local government programs have both fumbled. In late October, while most of Puerto Rico remained bathed in darkness come nightfall, Tesla CEO Elon Musk turned the lights on at San Juan's Children's Hospital using rooftop solar panels and batteries.

In New York City, the Coastal Marine Resource Center has launched "Resilient Power P.R.," aimed at delivering solar-electric systems to the island's most remote areas.

Pledging to resurrect his grandmother's house with solar panels on the roof, stage composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, of "Hamilton" fame, recently told CBS News "we have an opportunity in the wake of tragedy to rebuild, and rebuild smarter, and rebuild better."

Reese agrees.

NOT EITHER-OR

In Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth since 1952 and under U.S. control since 1898, the arguments against subsidizing solar power fall by the wayside, say Reese and other industry advocates. The federal government has already made at least a $5 billion commitment to bring the island's energy back.

"I think we get caught in an either-or mindset," Reese said. " 'You're not going to be able to replace all of Puerto Rico's grid with solar, so don't try.' Well, there's places where repairing a traditional power plant makes sense. But where that's been devastated ... solar can do it cheaper and faster. If the hurricanes took your transmission lines and knocked the whole thing over, you've got to start from scratch anyway. You've got to bring in the poles and you've got to bring in the wires."

Michael Allen, CEO of All Energy Solar in St. Paul, said modern technology could easily allow installation of "micro-grids," which would serve as back-ups for certain areas or buildings inside the traditional grid structure.

"Right now, when the main power plant, or the 'mother ship,' goes down, she usually takes everything else down with it," Allen said. "Now we can tap into technology to isolate certain neighborhoods so they can have power even when there is a power outage."

"It can be as easy as installing a back-up power supply, whether it's windmills or solar power battery," he added. "You can do it for a residential area, or where micro-grids are gaining a lot of attention ... community centers or hospitals that can't afford to be without power for an extended period of time. These are things that are available right now."

THIRD-WORLD TECH LEAPFROG

John Farrell, a senior researcher with Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has written at length about the energy challenges facing Puerto Rico. He worries that with a simple grid rebuild, the island will lose local oversight of PREPA, its failing, outage-prone energy utility, which had a $4 billion maintenance backlog even before the hurricane hit, opening the door to predatory practices by outside companies.

Corey Orehek, marketing director for Roseville-based solar energy developer IPS Solar, noted that Puerto Rico imports most of its fuel.

"With energy prices being so high on the island, and their heavy reliance on diesel fuel, this would be a great opportunity to start incorporating solar energy in Puerto Rico," Orehek said. "This also may be an opportunity for a technology leapfrog -- much like so many people around the world who didn't have land-line phones were able to acquire cell phones."

Meanwhile, Orehek and other advocates say that if the mounting number of natural disasters in populated areas are the new normal, then utilities need to adapt, as well.

"IPS Solar had a client near the BWCA (Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area) who survived heavy forest fires because of their solar-plus-battery storage system," Orehek said. "They were the only ones in the area that didn't lose power."

Timothy DenHerder-Thomas, general manager at Cooperative Energy Futures, a Minneapolis-based energy efficiency organization, thinks remote and undeveloped areas lacking in utility infrastructure are perhaps the most ripe for solar energy, especially near the equator.

"Parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent are already finding it cheaper to develop local solar and storage energy systems to provide electricity than it is to build a new energy grid," DenHerder-Thomas said.

And in Puerto Rico, a full grid repair will take time, especially in the island's hardest-to-reach mountain areas -- more time than the federal government has let on, Reese said.

UNREALISTIC PREDICTIONS?

Days after the hurricane made landfall on Sept. 20, official FEMA predicted that restoring energy to the island of 3.4 million people would take six months to a year, costing the U.S. some $5 billion -- two predictions that make Reese shake his head in disbelief.

As if to confirm his worst fears, in late October the governor of Puerto Rico canceled a $300 million, 100-mile contract with a two-person Montana company called Whitefish. The governor called it a 10-to-12 week setback.

"That's $3 million a mile, before distribution costs," said Reese, noting Puerto Rico is home to 2,400 miles of transmission lines, 80 percent of which "were flattened."

At this rate, he figures $10 billion to $20 billion to repair the traditional electricity grid would be a more realistic cost estimate. For as little as half that price, he believes, the government could equip all 1 million homes on the island with solar technology. And with most of the island still bathed in darkness at sundown two months after Maria's landfall, there's no way in his view that power will be fully restored within a year under the current approach. Well before FEMA has the lights back on, back-up generators could shut down for good.

"In mountain areas, helicopters are going to have to drop equipment," said Reese, who points to media reports from early October that showed 17 of the island's 69 hospitals operating off the power grid. "The rest were operating on fossil fuel generators -- so diesel gas. Every hospital is different, but many of them burn 2,000 gallons a day. Even at normal fuel costs, that's $6,000 a day. And generators aren't meant to run months on end. Official reports still say it'll be 6 months to a year before power is restored. And they were saying that the day after the hurricane."

A NEW NONPROFIT

The day after the hurricane, Reese drove himself to the home of his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Francesco Marraffa, to make a pitch. Marraffa had spent 10 years as an international salesman in the oil industry before switching to real estate investment. "I went over to his house and said, 'dude, this is messed up,' " Reese said. "Do you think we can work together? And within five minutes, we were shooting ideas back and forth."

They noted that at 18 degrees latitude above the equator, Puerto Rico has the perfect sun exposure to benefit from small-scale solar energy installations on homes and commercial buildings. The limited solar paneling that already exists in Puerto Rico survived the storm surprisingly well, at least when it was installed to modern codes and at angles almost flush to the roof line, preventing the wind from getting underneath the equipment. Another benefit: homes in Puerto Rico tend to run smaller than they do in the continental U.S., so they need less electricity.

Reese and Marraffa formed a nonprofit, Energy Releaf, aimed at rapid response to natural disasters. Reese believes there are 100 solar projects ready to go in Puerto Rico and neighboring St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. which was hard-hit by hurricanes Irma and Maria. With local and international firms donating time and equipment, each project is being implemented for an average of $5,000. Even without charitable donations, Reese believes that if the U.S. government or another backer bought equipment in bulk, Puerto Rico's 1 million homes could be equipped with solar power for $10,000 apiece.

In early November, Marraffa boarded a plane to China to meet with factory producers of solar energy panels, which are hard to obtain in mass quantity in the U.S. "They're years ahead of us," said Reese, noting the U.S. could still fill in other gaps in the solar industry by training electrical technicians and improving the cost and efficiency of solar batteries.

There's an argument to be made, said Reese, for learning from the past, rather than repeating it.

"It didn't take a hurricane to cause power blackouts in Puerto Rico," he said. "They had blackouts before. A storm would hit a substation and there'd be blackouts across the island. ... We've got an opportunity in Puerto Rico where the utility is struggling. They're essentially bankrupt. The government is bankrupt. ... The poor and vulnerable are always the most at risk, and the last to get their power back."

___

(c)2017 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

Visit the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) at www.twincities.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.