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Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout

When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April, a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on. There, nestled in the mountains on the midwestern side of the island, a combination of experimental microgrids, solar panels, and storage kept power on for many businesses and residents. The rest of the island waited over 24 hours, and in some cases longer, for electricity to be restored. The blackout was the latest in a series of power interruptions that have come to define Puerto

Puerto Rico’s power struggles

The plant, owned by the utility giant AES, has long plagued this part of Puerto Rico with air and water pollution. During Hurricane Maria in 2017, powerful winds and rain swept the unsecured pile—towering more than 12 stories high—out into the ocean and the surrounding area. Though the company had moved millions of tons of ash around Puerto Rico to be used in construction and landfill, much of it had stayed in Guayama, according to a 2018 investigation by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo,