Locals came to charge phones, run dialysis machines, and store medications in the center’s refrigerators. Environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo installed their first solar panels in 1999 and retrofitted the system to be completely off-grid just months before the hurricane. Meanwhile, a longstanding energy independence initiative was paying dividends while providing reliable power in his own backyard.Ī few blocks from the pizza shop, dozens of Adjunteños gathered at another community refuge - this one powered by renewable energy. When the grid finally came back on, the cost of energy kept rising - electric bills were sucking up 30% of Lucy’s operating expenses. Irizarry had spent $15,000 on diesel in the six months he was without power after Maria. The microgrid project is the latest effort in a two decades-long grassroots movement to build energy security in Puerto Rico in the form of solar power. “To have better, alternative power, to be able to live.” “After Maria, we saw the vulnerability and the necessity to have an electric system that truly works,” Irizarry says. He’s one of 14 merchants in downtown Adjuntas who invested in the island’s first community-owned solar microgrids - expected to go live before the height of hurricane season this summer. Now, nearly six years later, Irizarry is poised to generate his own energy from the sun. Irizarry was often up in the middle of the night to restart the generator because of the risk of losing power to the refrigerators. The generator was loud, emitted dangerous fumes and wasn’t always reliable. Using a diesel generator, Lucy’s was running at about 75% capacity. “The line,” he gestured down the block along the town’s central plaza, “endless.” “No one has power, you can’t get gas, it’s difficult to make food, so everyone came here to eat,” says owner Gustavo Irizarry. The town’s 18,000 residents, like those on the rest of the island, were entirely without electricity. For two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, Lucy’s Pizza was the only restaurant open in the central mountain town of Adjuntas.
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