D.L. Troche
Boriken Futuro,
United States
Keywords: community microgrids, distributed energy storage, grid resilience, battery integration, Puerto Rico, climate adaptation, storage demonstrations
Summary:
Puerto Rico shows what chronic grid instability does to families, businesses, and entire communities. The island experiences an average of twenty seven hours without power every year even before hurricanes are counted. This is the daily reality for residents across the archipelago and it reveals the scale of the resilience gap that storage and microgrids can begin to close. To understand the weight of that number, it helps to compare it with the mainland. Across the United States, power interruptions cost businesses at least one hundred and fifty billion dollars every year and yet most Americans lose power for only a couple of hours per year when major storms are not included. This contrast explains why Puerto Rico needs solutions that work now and why demonstrations that show how storage performs in real environments are essential. This project introduces a community microgrid demonstration in El Coco in the municipality of Salinas. It builds on what I have learned through Cornell University, the Founder Institute, and the Power to Pitch program which have each reinforced the importance of pairing strong narrative with community grounded technical work. The demonstration uses modular battery storage, distributed solar, and adaptive power electronics to stabilize energy access for neighborhoods that have lived with unreliable service for years. The design is intentionally simple and scalable because Puerto Rico does not need complex pilots. It needs systems that communities can adopt, maintain, and trust. The goal of this demonstration is to evaluate how decentralized storage can strengthen reliability when the centralized grid continues to fail local families and small businesses. It also examines how unused land, community partnerships, and culturally aligned engagement can unlock siting opportunities in rural and coastal regions that have been overlooked. This effort aligns with the legacy of Dr Imre Gyuk because he championed storage that delivered meaningful benefits on the ground. His work emphasized practical deployment, community impact, and resilience as a lived experience rather than an abstract concept. The pilot gathers data on how battery systems perform under heat, humidity, and storms that push electrical equipment to its limits. It documents the permitting process, interconnection constraints, and the financial and regulatory challenges that shape deployment in Puerto Rico. These lessons can help federal partners, national laboratories, utilities, and private developers understand what it takes to build distributed storage in a climate vulnerable region. This project highlights the role of storage in advancing equity. In El Coco and similar communities, long outages interrupt income, spoil food, affect health, and create stress compounded over time. By creating a model where landowners can participate financially and communities can benefit directly, the project aims to support a long term approach to energy access built on shared value and local empowerment. This demonstration is the first step in a broader effort to bring community scale storage to neighborhoods across Puerto Rico. By sharing design decisions, community insights, and early performance data, this work contributes to national conversations on resilience and decentralized storage.