Queremos Sol: Seeking Solar Power for All Puerto Rican Homes
Originally published on ILSR.org
Residents of Puerto Rico are ready for energy democracy. Specifically, a resilient, renewable electricity system with equitably shared benefits. Is this vision possible for the island, whose democratic power is limited to begin with?
For this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell speaks with guest Ingrid Vila, environmental engineer and founder of non-profit Cambio. After Puerto Rico’s many catastrophic grid failures, Vila and Cambio have re envisioned the island’s energy future in a proposal called ‘Queremos Sol.’ Vila explains why rooftop solar should power every home in Puerto Rico, reducing residential electricity rates and covering basic needs during future crises.
Listen to the full episode and explore more resources below — including a transcript and summary of the conversation.
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Episode Transcript
Promoting Sustainable and Responsible Actions
Ingrid Vila came to work in renewable energy advocacy by way of environmental engineering. She specialized in water, but through her service in Puerto Rico’s government, began working with renewable energy as well. In 2015, Vila left her role in the government and founded Cambio, a non-profit organization based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her new mission? To work with communities on sustainable solutions in the solid waste, water, environmental justice, governance, and energy fields.
Vila describes Cambio’s overarching mission as establishing an equitable society with greater opportunities. The organization’s efforts are spent researching, designing, and implementing socially responsible policies. Vila refers to Cambio as an “actionable think tank.”
Turmoil After Hurricane Maria
Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017 and in its wake, more than a million Puerto Ricans were left without power for months. It took the local utility, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, nearly a year to restore power to every person affected by the blackout. The vulnerability of the island’s electric grid became the overriding topic of discussion in Puerto Rico and captured audiences around the world. Vila describes this as a “tipping point” for her, as she turned her attention to renewable energy solutions.
“The impact those events had on our grid were incredibly severe and exposed the vulnerability of our current electrical system … we couldn’t just rebuild that because it obviously was not working adequately given the current challenges and realities of climate change.”
Despite Puerto Rico’s 100% Renewable Portfolio Standard, leaders are looking to rebuild the vulnerable old system and reinforce a dependence on fossil fuels. The government first signed a 15 year contract to privatize the electric transmission and distribution system. Now, Puerto Rico’s Governor is suggesting that they privatize the generation system as well.
“They’re here pretty much to continue to administer the status quo … this is a contract that pretty much just took the failed public monopoly and passed it on to a private hand.”
We Want Sun — The ‘Queremos Sol’ Campaign
In the summer of 2018, Vila and Cambio presented ‘Queremos Sol’ as an alternative to reinforcing the status quo. Queremos Sol outlines how Puerto Rico could install solar-plus-storage on nearly all homes, powering the island with 50 percent renewable energy by 2035 and 100 percent by 2050.
Along with a rigorous public education campaign, Cambio studied how Queremos Sol would affect Puerto Rico’s electric grid through an in-depth model. In the model, they found that solar could provide 75 percent of the island’s electricity demand by 2035 and found no need to add fossil gas generation to the grid. Outage events would have less of an impact, as every home would have enough electric power to meet basic needs.
“One of the greatest results from that study is being able to demonstrate that Puerto Rico’s resiliency, and individual home and community level resiliency, could be quite different if money were put and focus were put on transforming the grid via renewable energy.”
In the 30 Million Solar Homes Impact report, we found that putting solar on just 1 in 4 homes in Puerto Rico would create 45,000 jobs.
Puerto Rico has 14 billion dollars of federal funds to use in repairing its energy sector. Using 9.6 billion of that sum, says Vila, Puerto Rico could install solar on 100% of homes and reduce electric rates by nearly 30 percent.
“We’re not just talking about infrastructure, and cables, and things like that. We’re talking about something that is essential for human lives.”
Lessons on Advancing Energy Democracy
Vila describes the road to energy democracy as “a battleground;” those holding the power won’t let it go willingly. Her best advice is to articulate the alternative in the same language as the opposition: data and evidence.
How can listeners support Puerto Rico? Vila asks that renewable energy advocates apply federal pressure. She hopes that the U.S. will create clear guidelines for federal funds and prohibit FEMA funding of fossil fuel investments.
“Energy democracy means taking all that power, and that wealth… and redistributing among a wider population. So the resistance is incredible to be able to move towards that and implies understanding energy as a common good and as a human right, and not as a commodity left to the market forces.”
Episode Notes
See these resources for more behind the story:
This is the 138th episode of Local Energy Rules, an ILSR podcast with Energy Democracy Director John Farrell, which shares powerful stories of successful local renewable energy and exposes the policy and practical barriers to its expansion.
Local Energy Rules is Produced by ILSR’s John Farrell and Maria McCoy. Audio engineering by Drew Birschbach.
This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell on Twitter, our energy work on Facebook, or sign up to get the Energy Democracy weekly update.
Featured photo credit: Dept. of Energy Solar Decathlon via flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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Mining company Vale is turning to Caterpillar to provide this massive, 240-ton battery-electric haul truck in a bid to slash carbon emissions at its mines by 2030.
Caterpillar and Vale have signed an agreement that will see the Brazilian mining company test severe-duty battery electric mining trucks like the 793 BEV (above), as well as V2G/V2x energy transfer systems and alcohol-powered trucks. The test will help Vale make better equipment choices as it works to achieve its goals of reducing direct and indirect carbon emissions 33% by 2030 and eliminating 100% of its net emissions by 2050.
If that sounds weird, consider that most cars and trucks in Brazil run on either pure ethyl alcohol/ethanol (E100) or “gasohol” (E25).
“We are developing a portfolio of options to decarbonize Vale’s operations, including electrification and the use of alternative fuels in the mines. The most viable solutions will be adopted,” explains Ludmila Nascimento, energy and decarbonization director Vale. “We believe that ethanol has great potential to contribute to the 2030 target because it is a fuel that has already been adopted on a large scale in Brazil, with an established supply network, and which requires an active partnership with manufacturers. We stand together to support them in this goal.”
Vale will test a 240-ton Cat 793 battery-electric haul truck at its operations in Minas Gerais, and put energy transfer solutions to a similar tests at Vale’s operations in Pará over the next two-three years. Caterpillar and Vale have also agreed to a joint study on the viability of a dual-fuel (ethanol/diesel) solution for existing ICE-powered assets.
Vale claims to be the world’s largest producer of iron ore and nickel, and says it’s committed to an investment of between $4 billion to $6 billion to meet its 2030 goal.
Cat 793 electric haul truck
During its debut in 2022, the Cat 793 haul truck was shown on a 4.3-mile test course at the company’s Tucson proving grounds. There, the 240-ton truck was able to achieve a top speed of over 37 mph (60 km/h) fully loaded. Further tests involved the loaded truck climbing a 10% grade for a full kilometer miles at 7.5 mph before unloading and turning around for the descent, using regenerative braking to put energy back into the battery on the way down.
Despite not giving out detailed specs, Caterpillar reps reported that the 793 still had enough charge in its batteries for to complete more testing cycles.
Electrek’s Take
Electric equipment and mining to together like peanut butter and jelly. In confined spaces, the carbon emissions and ear-splitting noise of conventional mining equipment can create dangerous circumstances for miners and operators, and that can lead to injury or long-term disability that’s just going to exacerbate a mining operation’s ability to keep people working and minerals coming out of the ground.
By working with companies like Vale to prove that forward-looking electric equipment can do the job as well as well as (if not better than) their internal combustion counterparts, Caterpillar will go a long way towards converting the ICE faithful.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Caterpillar, Construction Equipment, and E&MJ.
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American mine; via NPROXX
Argonne National Laboratory is building a new research and development facility to independently test large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for heavy-duty and off-road applications with funding from the US Department of Energy.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is hoping Argonne Nat’l Lab’s extensive fuel cell research experience, which dates back to 1996, will give it unique insights as it evaluates new polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems ranging from 150 to 600 kilowatts for use in industrial vehicle and stationary power generation applications.
The new Argonne test facility will help prove (or, it should be said, disprove) the validity of hydrogen as a viable fuel for transportation applications including heavy trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, and heavy machines used in the agriculture, construction, and mining industries.
“The facility will serve as a national resource for analysis and testing of heavy-duty fuel cell systems for developers, technology integrators and end-users in heavy-duty transportation applications including [OTR] trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, aircraft and vehicles used in the agriculture, construction and mining industries,” explains Ted Krause, laboratory relationship manager for Argonne’s hydrogen and fuel cell programs. “The testing infrastructure will help advance fuel cell performance and pave the way toward integrating the technology into all of these transportation applications.”
The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) of DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is dedicating about $4 million to help build the new Argonne facility, which is set to come online next fall.
Electrek’s Take
It’s going to be hard to convince me that the concentrated push for a technology as inefficient as hydrogen fuel cells has more to do with any real consumer or climate benefit than it does keeping the throngs of people it will take to manufacture, capture, transport, store, house, and effectively dispense hydrogen gainfully employed through the next election cycle.
As such, while case studies like the hydrogen combustion-powered heavy trucks that have been trialed at Anglo American’s Mogalakwena mine since 2021 (at top) and fuel cell-powered concepts like Komatsu’s medium-sized excavator (above) have proven that hydrogen as a fuel can definitely work on a job site level while producing far fewer harmful emissions than diesel, I think swappable batteries like the ones being shown off by Moog Construction and Firstgreen have a far brighter future.
Speaking of Moog, we talked to some of the engineers being their ZQuip modular battery systems on a HEP-isode of The Heavy Equipment Podcast a few months back. I’ve included it, below, in case that’s something you’d like to check out.
SOURCES | IMAGES: ANL, Komatsu, and NPROXX.
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Velocity truck rental is doing its part to help commercial fleets electrify by energizing 47 high-powered charging stations at four strategic dealer locations across Southern California. And they’re doing it now.
The new Velocity Truck Rental & Leasing (VTRL) charging network isn’t some far-off goal being announced for PR purposes. The company says its new chargers are already in the ground, and set to be fully online and energized by the end of this month at at VTRL facilities in Rancho Dominguez (17), Fontana (14), the City of Industry (14), and San Diego (2).
45 120 kW Detroit e-Fill chargers make up the bulk of VTRL’s infrastructure project, while two DCFC stations from ChargePoint get them to 47. All of the chargers, however, where chosen specifically to cater to the needs of medium and heavy-duty battery electric work trucks.
The company says it chose the Detroit e-Fill commercial-grade chargers because they’ve already proven themselves in Daimler-heavy fleets with their ability to bring Class 8 Freightliner eCascadias, Class 6 and 7 Freightliner eM2 box trucks, and RIZON Class 4 and 5 cabover trucks, “to 80% state of charge in just 90 minutes or less.”
At Velocity, we are not just reacting to the shift towards electric mobility; we are at the forefront with our customers and actively shaping it. By integrating high-powered, commercial-grade charging solutions along key transit corridors, we are ensuring that our customers have the support they need today. This charging infrastructure investment is a testament to our commitment to helping our customers transition smoothly to electromobility solutions and to prepare for compliance with the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulations.
David Deon, velocity president
Velocity plans to offer flexible charging options to accommodate the needs of different fleets, including both managed, “charging as a service” subscription plans and self-managed/opportunity charging during daily routes. While trucks are charging, drivers and operators will be able to relax in comfortable break rooms equipped with WIFI, television, snacks, water, and restrooms.
Electrek’s Take
While it feels a bit underwhelming to write about trucking companies simply following the letter of the law in California, the rollout of an all-electric, zero-emission commercial trucking fleet remains something that, I think, should be celebrated.
As such, I’m celebrating it. I hope you are, too.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Global Newswire; Daimler Trucks.
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