Energy

How Microgrids in Puerto Rico Help During Hurricanes

- Adam Clare

A picture of a microgrid setup in Puerto Rico

Back in 2017 Puerto Rico was hit hard by Hurricane Maria and lost power for an extended period of time and led to nearly 3,000 lives lost due to the loss of power. Puerto Ricans decided that they would never let that happen again, so they started a massive roll out of renewable energy. The island now has a series of microgrids that won’t lose power when the main grid goes down. Renewable energy means a sustainable planet and a sustainable connection to energy.

At the end of March, LUMA reported over 1.14 gigawatts of grid-connected distributed solar capacity, with an additional 2.34 gigawatt-hours of distributed batteries connected to the grid. Solar power produces over 2 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, which accounts for more than 12.5 percent of Puerto Rico’s total residential electricity consumption annually. The majority of that power is generated from residential solar, and capacity continues to grow as more residents install systems with private financing.

Adjuntas, which has a population of about 18,000, took a more experimental approach. The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised. It’s what kept multiple areas in Adjuntas electrified during April’s island-wide blackout.

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How Solar Supports Ukraine

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

In the ongoing war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine power plants have been attacked by both sides to hurt military and civilian operations. Beyond the obvious horrors of war the loss of power generation makes heating homes more challenging and people are suffering as a result. As Russia continues to target large power installations the solution is to turn to distributed power generation, and the best for of distributed power is renewable power. There’s now an organization in Ukraine installing solar power throughout the country to improve reliability of the grid and make it harder for Russia to cause blackouts.

What’s more, if we all follow Ukraine’s lead and get off of centralized power generation and move to a renewably powered electric economy then Russia would have fewer customers to sell oil to.

Hospitals save thousands of lives every day providing medical care to the civilian population, and for that they need an uninterrupted electricity supply. Water utilities provide water supply to the population. Solar power plants are a long-term solution to the problem, a reliable protection against possible worsening of the situation, and also one of the first steps for Ukrainian municipalities towards the green recovery of the country.

The non-government organization Ecoclub with the support of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, launched the Solar Aid For Ukraine Project ITS PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE UKRAINIAN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH A RELIABLE SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY, WHICH IS SOLAR POWER PLANTS

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Packing Potential Power: Better Batteries Blasting Baselines

- Adam Clare
Graph showing increasing quality of batteries and decreasing costs of batteries.
Source: Ziegler and Trancik (2021) before 2018 (end of data), BNEF Long-Term Electric Vehicle Outlook (2023) since 2018, BNEF Lithium-Ion Battery Price Survey (2023) for 2015-2023, RMI analysis.

The baseline power that a battery can deal out is increasing at a faster rate than anticipated. This s-curve of growth reflects the burgeoning demand of batteries as we increasingly electricity our systems and shift away from fossil fuels (finally!), and global industry is feeding that demand. As there is more demand for batteries we see an increase in supply and research into improving batteries, which lead to better batteries. This feedback loop of efficiency is driving growth in batteries to double every three years! Even government subsidies for the fossil fuel sector won’t keep the oil companies burning our planet once these bigger market factors really are felt on the global economy. Once you go electric, you never go back.

If we look forward to the next seven years, we see the drivers of change strengthening. Notably, we see costs continuing to fall, policy support continuing to rise, and competition between economic blocs continuing to drive a race to the top. And while there are barriers to battery adoption on the horizon, humanity’s wit, will, and capital are scaling proportionally faster. Thus, we do not see a scenario of slow adoption as credible; instead, we model two futures: fast or faster. Reality is likely to lie somewhere between the two.

RMI forecasts that in 2030, top-tier density will be between 600 and 800 Wh/kg, costs will fall to $32–$54 per kWh, and battery sales will rise to between 5.5–8 TWh per year. To get a sense of this speed of change, the lower-bound (or the “fast” scenario) is running in line with BNEF’s Net Zero scenario. The faster S-curve scenario exceeds it.

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This 28-ton Kite Provides 1.2MW of Power

- Adam Clare

One of bizarre criticisms of solar power is that it only works when the sun hits them which means some areas are hesitant to install large solar arrays (honestly, this criticism is so strange since energy use is highest during daytime). Lunar energy, on the other hand, works all day and is very easy to predict which is why using the moon to provide power is ganging interest. This lunar power is captured through tidal flows, has the moon moves water on Earth we can capture that energy by creating machines that spin turbines using the passing water. That’s exactly what Minesto has done with their underwater kite. Traditional tidal power sources are stationary whereas the Minesto Dragon 12 is only tethered to the sea floor so it can ride underwater currents to produce more power than a stationary tidal generator.

The Dragon 12, like other tidal devices, will be more effective in some places than others – and Denmark’s Faroe Islands, an archipelago in the chilly North Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland, offer ideal conditions. Home to about 55,000 people and more than a million puffins, the Faroe Islands funnel tidal currents through a number of slim channels. This accelerates the water significantly, and thus increases the energy that devices like the Dragon 12 can harvest.
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“This is a big day for Minesto,” said Dr Martin Edlund, CEO of Minesto, in a press release. “We have reached the most significant milestone in the history of the company by producing electricity to the grid with our mega-watt scale powerplant. We are both proud and happy and more than ever look forward to the journey ahead … The competitiveness of the Dragon 12 is straight to the point; it’s powerful, cost-effective and feeds predictable electricity to the grid.”

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Let’s End Gas Subsidies

- Adam Clare

For some strange reason countries like Canada keep giving tax money to ultra wealthy oil and gas companies even though they keep killing all life on the planet. Let’s stop this. The team at Solar Share hosted a good information session on how we can reduce government money going to oil and gas, and of course, channeling that money to renewables. It’s worth a watch.

On February 12, over 30 participants joined us for our webinar about ending gas subsidies in Ontario, featuring Kent Elson (Elson Advocacy) and Jessica Hamilton (former political candidate and staffer).

We discussed the Ford government’s plan to overrule the Ontario Energy Board’s decision on gas subsidies, what “natural” methane gas is, and how to effectively engage with our elected representatives in Ontario.

There were some excellent questions and comments, and you can watch the recording here!

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