In September 2017, when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and left about 90 percent of its territory without electricity – and that shortage left a bigger death toll -, one only house in the entire town of Adjuntas still had light. It is the headquarters of the Casa Pueblo association, which has been operating with solar energy since 1999.
Adjuntas is a midwestern small town of the island, located in the central mountain range. It is a mountain and a coffee-growing village. The hurricane uprooted the roofs of their houses and left them in the dark for months. Casa Pueblo began operating in 1980 as an organization advocating for the preservation of natural resources and the environment. Ten years later it began generating electricity with solar energy. As they explain on their website, they installed a system of 35 photovoltaic panels, a charge regulator, 12 batteries and a current converter. The panels receive light from the sun and pass the energy to the batteries, which are charged to use that energy when needed, as the regulator maintains the balance of that charge. (The Casa Pueblo’s cinema and radio are powered by this energy.)
This was essential to respond to the damage caused by the hurracaine in 2017.
Arturo Massol Deyá, member of the board of directors of this association, said in an interview with Frank Interviews that Casa Pueblo acted as an “energy oasis.”
A USA Today article signed by Rick Jervis reports that, in the midst of the devastation of the hurricane, the radio remained on air, which was a central source of information about the emergency, according to the founder of this organization, Alexis Massol-González, Adjuntas’ neighbors rushed to Casa Pueblo to plug in their dialysis machines, their mini fridges to store their medications, their cell phones, Massol-González said.
“At times, hundreds of people would show up each day,” he added.
During the emergency, Casa Pueblo distributed 14,000 units of solar lamps in Adjuntas. They also supported the installation of solar panels at the homes of people whose health depends on electricity: dialyzed and respiratory patients or insulin-dependent persons who need refrigerators to store their medicines. They helped install equipment at grocery stores and homes in more remote areas. Arturo Massol Deyá confirmed this to Frank News.
The Empowered by Light Foundation, based in San Francisco, California, began operating in Puerto Rico two weeks after Hurricane Maria. In Adjuntas, they partnered with Casa Pueblo, and donated solar panels for the town’s bomb park, and for a longstanding nursing home.
The foundation made other partnerships with specialized companies to provide solar power equipment to eleven fire stations throughout Puerto Rico.
Casa Pueblo is currently promoting the “50% with the Sun” campaign, so that in 2027, on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s passage through Puerto Rico, 50% of the island’s electricity comes from the sun’s energy that feeds directly into photovoltaic panels that should be installed on the roofs of houses.
“Studies conducted by researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, showed that by using only 65% of the roof surfaces of the current structures on the island, is possible to generate 100% of the energy consumed in the country at peak hours,” they claim in the campaign.
To this end, they call on the government of Puerto Rico and investors to put money in the installation of these panels, as well as in means of storage and management of electrical energy, “to develop communities of micro-grids of renewable energy . These communities may have other renewable energy generators such as small-scale windmills and hydraulic microturbines, depending on the location of the community.”
Precisely, Google is developing a tool that looks at the roofs of buildings. It is called Project Sunroof. It already works in some areas of California. Joel Kongling, the project’s product manager, presented it In Puerto Rico at the end of January, El Nuevo Día reported. “Project Sunroof estimates that 90% of roofs in Puerto Rico are viable for the establishment of solar systems,” the article says.
“With Google maps you can see the roof of a house, building or business. Taking into account, for example, the angle of the sun, the shade and if there are buildings around that can block the light, the tool takes a very precise count of how much energy can be produced in a year,” electrical engineer Gerso Beauchamp, member of the Technical and Scientific Committee of Casa Pueblo, told El Nuevo Día.
Casa Pueblo could be the reference for this tool, which for now will start operating in other municipalities on the island: San Juan, Ponce, Arecibo, Aguadilla and Mayagüez.
The history of Casa Pueblo is recorded in the documentary After the dark, produced by Google Earth.
They call it democracy, but they also call it insurrection: an energetic democracy and insurrection. They also call it energy resilience. This means a change of model that involves diversifying the sources of energy generation in Puerto Rico, and, at the end, generating that transformation from the communities’ own management.