Brighter days may be on the way for the people of Puerto Rico.
For years, the U.S. territory has been plagued by devastating power outages. Many of its power plants are old and far from where people live. Plus, Puerto Rico is in the Caribbean Sea, an area prone to hurricanes.
In 2017, Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s electrical grid. That resulted in an 11-month blackout—the longest in American history—and led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
The aging grid hadn’t been fully repaired when, this past fall, Hurricane Fiona knocked out power once again. Two weeks later, about 82,000 of Puerto Rico’s 3.1 million residents were still in the dark.
Today the territory is finding hope in a different power source—solar energy. Since Hurricane Maria, people have installed roughly 50,000 rooftop solar-powered systems on homes in Puerto Rico. The systems turn sunlight into stored electricity. And they kept working during Hurricane Fiona.
For some people, it was proof that Puerto Rico’s future should be sun-powered. About 3 percent of the territory’s energy is created by renewable sources, like solar. The rest comes from fossil fuels, such as oil.
Puerto Rico has vowed to get all its electricity from renewable sources by 2050. Reaching that goal will be challenging. The government only recently emerged from bankruptcy, and its power company is billions of dollars in debt.
Meanwhile, most federal aid given to the territory for hurricane relief remains unspent. Puerto Rico’s governor has said he will use some of it to install solar panels on homes.
That is a step in the right direction, says Luis Martinez of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental group. It “can help Puerto Ricans better manage the impacts of extreme weather,” he explains.