Booming solar and storage are propping up Puerto Rico’s grid this summer

Nearly every night for the past two weeks, Puerto Rico’s grid operator has called on tens of thousands of batteries scattered across the island to overcome energy shortfalls and help deliver power to approximately three million residents — and it’s working.

What started as a modest pilot program in 2023 has grown into the first operational behind-the-meter virtual power plant in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a crucial support for the territory’s dilapidated energy infrastructure, said Javier Rúa-Jovet, chief policy officer of the Solar and Energy Storage Association of Puerto Rico.

In May, Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau, which regulates utilities, approved an emergency expansion of the “customer battery energy sharing” program in anticipation of a projected generation shortfall during the warmer months.

Since then, LUMA Energy, the grid operator, celebrated what it called a “major energy milestone.”

Today, Rúa-Jovet said there are about 175,000 households with solar, and at least 160,000 of those also have storage. Companies are installing thousands of systems a month. There is also a growing market for batteries that charge from the grid without panels, he said, but the organization doesn’t have data on that.