In 2022, the town of Castañer, Puerto Rico, experienced outages 16 times longer than average, based on utility data from the 50 states, according to a community energy resilience plan from the nonprofit Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC).
The plan, a year in the making with input from a broad range of community members, identifies residents, municipal agencies and businesses that could benefit from energy resilience through existing and planned microgrids and distributed energy resources (DER).
The organizations working together on the plan include Slipstream—which helps deploy climate solutions— IREC, Luma Energy–the electricity distribution company–utility cooperative La Cooperativa Hidroeléctrica de la Montaña, ACE IoT Solutions and Texas A&M University, according to the plan.
To solve resilience challenges, it’s critical that stakeholders, decision-makers, government institutions and a diverse group of community members participate in developing plans, said the plan. The Castañer Energy Resilience Plan (CERP) is an example of this process, the plan said.
As part of the effort, community members identified residents and critical community services that need resilient energy, said Carlos Alberto Velázquez, program director, IREC. That included 22 homes with people who are bedridden, have limited mobility or who have medical devices. The idea is to provide solar and storage to these people, possibly under power purchase agreements (PPA), which don’t require up-front investments. First, it’s important to determine whether the roofs on the homes are structurally sound enough to hold solar systems, said Velázquez.
The team that developed the plan also identified a shelter and nearby critical services in the town as a candidate for a resilience hub.
It’s possible that the community will also meet the needs of the agricultural sector–which focuses on producing coffee, vanilla and cocoa–with PPAs, he said.
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https://www.microgridknowledge.com/remote-and-island-microgrids/article/55251253/cooperating-to-create-resilency-for-castaner-plan-to-network-ders-and-community-microgrids-for-outage-prone-puerto-rican-town