http://caribbeanbusiness.com/senators-concerned-about-usace-exit-amid-puerto-rico-grid-repair/
Reporter Eva Llorens Velez says:
"Some of the senators noted that if Puerto Rico wants to be resilient and produce 30% of the energy with renewable sources, system redundancy must be in place. Bruce Walker, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, spoke at length about strategies to make the grid more resilient."
I find that most of the time "renewable" is code for solar and wind, although there are other renewable alternatives (nuclear, landfill gas, OTEC, waste to energy, cogeneration, to name a few).
Getting people to switch from electric to propane for cooking, water heating and clothes drying would save a lot of energy each year even though propane may not be renewable.
I've posted enough on solar and wind that I won't go into why they are bad ideas again.
Whatever else they are and are not, they are NOT resilient. Not in the face of a hurricane.
Yes, we need reliable, resilient, power. Yes, we need the power distributed around the island. It is ridiculous that Fajardo gets its power from Peñuelas. Not just for resiliency but for the cost of transmitting that power all that distance. We need a large number of smaller, 100-500MW plants, perhaps even smaller than 100MW widely distributed.
Many manufacturing plants would like to build microgrids and there is no reason why they can't do it safely and effectively.
Except PREPA:
“We have not been able to do that in the past because typically Prepa
protects its invoices. We are the biggest invoice. They may be concerned
about this kind of threat,” he [Rodrigo Masses] said.
Longer term, I am hoping to see some of these small, package, nuclear power plants in PR in the next 5 years. Now that would be resilient AND renewable. They can put the first one in my backyard at Roosevelt Roads.
I won't feel threatened at all. But perhaps that is because I know something about the safety of nuclear power.
