Severe power failures in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean spur new interest in renewables - battery storage systems

Power disaster in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria
Strong storms hit several other Caribbean islands
Is pushing for new interest in shifting the island's power grid to a more dependent way of wind, solar, and even more dependent on large batteries one day.
Chris Burgess said: "To a large extent, the power grids of these islands have been completely destroyed, most of them will take four to six months to fully power their island again, the director of the island energy program at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Increase more renewable energy and move from a centralized grid to more renewable energy
Known as the "micro-grid", several energy experts say it can reduce costs and improve its ability to withstand storms.
Island countries have been at the forefront of climate change action for some time.
The Member States of the Association of Caribbean States, Caricom, already have a target of 47% Renewable energy by 2027.
The current storm will only bring more momentum.
"You look at islands like Dominic, Anguillan and others affected by the recent hurricane, and I have spoken to several utility companies, Tom Rogers said: "They say they prefer to use distributed generation with storage to rebuild, just trying to reduce the number of transmission lines. " An expert in renewable energy at Coventry University in the UK, has served as an energy lecturer at the western Indian university in Barbados.
"Because that's how their energy system failed.
It has these overhead cables.
"Even when the weather is good, islands like the Caribbean have energy problems: they tend to burn fossil fuels such as diesel or heavy fuel oil to drive centralized power plants.
But as an island that does not have its own fossil energy resources, it is very expensive to transport fuel --
Translated into the sky
High electricity bill-
Not to mention the environmental cost of burning it.
"Their energy prices are the highest in the world," Rogers said . ".
"This has had a huge impact on the economy, especially since a lot of the economy of these islands is dependent on tourism, which has brought a high energy demand to their hotels, especially air conditioning loads.
"Then, when the storm hits, the wires running through the entire island can cause the grid to be fragile.
Another model is to rely on wind energy, solar energy and batteries to store powerwith fossil-
Fuel backup ready when needed
The establishment of a small grid powered by renewable energy, connected to the main grid, but can also be "isolated" from it, not necessarily falling at the same time.
Rogers pointed out that the wind in the Caribbean is very predictable due to the letter wind, and the location in the tropical region makes the use of solar panels very effective.
"Photovoltaic [photovoltaic] systems installed in tropical areas will generate twice and a half more energy than identical photovoltaic systems installed in higher latitudes, such as in Washington or Europe, he said.
However, at least until battery storage becomes more widely affordable, the isolated island grid cannot be fully powered by the Sun, which will only come out in white.
Instead, they need to replace solar energy with some fossil fuels that continue to be used to ensure an ongoing supply of electricity.
Nevertheless, increasing renewable energy will reduce reliance on fuel that must be constantly replaced for combustion --
This means that it must be transported to the island continuously.
Some of the experience here can actually be learned from Alaska.
Although it is not an island, it contains many remote communities, as is the testing ground for deploying hundreds of microgrids --
Smaller grids can be connected to larger grids, but can also run independently of one grid
In order to start shifting these villages from transportation that is strictly dependent on burning --
More renewable resources.
"When we are faced with the kind of infrastructure damage that we have seen during this hurricane season, it makes sense to pause before reinvesting in a completely identical system that has proven fragile, "Gwen hawdeman directed the Alaska energy and power center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, he said by email.
Referring to Puerto Rico, she continued, "if the system were redesigned around a micro-grid containing local electricity production, there would still be losses, however, due to bad weather events, the number and duration of power outages will be reduced.
"However, there may be other plans for the Trump administration, at least in Puerto Rico and the United States. S.
To the Viking islands
For example, Energy Minister Rick Perry recently threw out the idea of the possibility of using a small modular nuclear reactor in circumstances such as the current disaster.
"If we have a small modular reactor, you can put it in C-
"[Military cargo] aircraft, ship it to areas like Puerto Rico and push it out to the back end, launch it and plug it in," Perry said recently . " According to Bloomberg BNA.
Not all analysis of energy change in islands focuses only on renewable energy.
A recent report by GTM Research, an energy analysis company, found that for the island, the most economical solution at present is actually to exchange liquefied natural gas for diesel or heavy oil from power plants.
But the report says liquefied natural gas and solar energy will soon be the economic winners.
Finally, once the cost of the battery drops far enough, the combination of solar energy and energy storage will make the most sense --
But the company does not expect this to happen until the end of 2020.
Tom heeggarty, senior analyst at GTM Research, reported: "The potential market for replacing oil with new power supplies is very large . ".
"We estimate that there are currently about 3,600 islands in the world where oil products provide a large portion of the electricity supply.
Some islands are already moving.
Jamaica plans to transform the diesel plant into natural gas, and Hawaii's Kauai Island combines solar and battery storage.
"On Kauai Island, during the noon rush hour, they actually only generated about 90% of the electricity from solar and battery," Burgess said . ".
Operating a centralized power plant using natural gas instead of diesel or heavy fuel oil can save costs, but not necessarily increasing resilience when a hurricane hits.
You still have a central plant, power distribution station and a large number of transmission lines that can generate electricity throughout the island.
That's the idea of a combination of renewable energy and micro-grid.
The micro-grid is naturally paired with renewable energy because you can generate electricity on some roof and community solar equipment and then build a local grid around these resources, usually supported by some fossil energyfuel-
The same is true for power generation.
In the storm, the various components of the grid may or may not work well, but its fate will not affect other microgrids or central grids.
A recent report from the National Association of electrical manufacturers found: "The multiple power generation sources of the micro-grid and the ability to isolate from larger networks during power outages in the central grid ensure highly reliable power . ".
To be sure, solar panels are not in a way particularly resistant to hurricane damage --
For example, an image from Puerto Rico shows a damaged panel for a major array-the Humacao solar project.
Burgess notes, however, that if some panels drop, it doesn't mean that the other panels will no longer work.
"It's like the Christmas lights of the new era: you lost a light bulb here and there, but you don't lose all the bulbs.
"In the future," Burgess said, "we will see the micro-grid inside the island, but we will also see that renewable energy has increased a lot of power generation, if not completely replaced. ".