Impactful Week in Puerto Rico

This past week, I’ve been in Puerto Rico with the Sunrun team and, as always, I’m honored and humbled to be part of impactful energy transition work here on the island where it’s sorely needed.

Five years ago, a team of us from Sunrun, working with non-profit Empowered By Light , installed donated solar and storage systems on fire stations to provide power to critical equipment in the wake of Hurricane Maria. This week, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Jennifer Granholm , toured one of these stations with us. The Secretary heard from the firefighters and from others for whom solar and batteries are a critical lifeline here. Thank you to the Fire Commissioner and to the Bomberos de Barrio Obrero for having us!?

On Tuesday, Puerto Rico’s electricity provider announced that Sunrun is bringing the first virtual power plant (#VPP) to the island - putting Puerto Rico in a leadership position both in the Caribbean and in the United States. Sunrun’s VPP will help lower grid costs and pollution for all on the island while still providing backup power for the 7,000 families whose systems will make up the VPP. This is the result of five years of dogged work to convince stakeholders that distributed energy resources should be the fundamental building blocks of a grid recovery. This will help further accelerate the customer-driven revolution here in Puerto Rico. I would like to thank all those involved, including many former Sunrunners. You know who you are!?

And, finally, we hosted our fifth annual #SESASUMMIT in San Juan. SESA Puerto Rico , was founded in the wake of Hurricane Maria to give voice to the solar and battery industry and customers. In five years we went from nothing to hosting Secretary Granholm, Governor Pierluisi, and national and international energy leaders at our annual summit. It has been incredible to work with the rest of our founding board under the tireless leadership of PJ Wilson ?????????? Wilson and Javier Rúa-Jovet . PJ and Javier and the whole SESA team are providing incredible value to the industry and customers in Puerto Rico. Get in contact with SESA if you’re even vaguely interested in doing business in PR!?

Resilient solar and batteries have only reached a fraction of the people in Puerto Rico - lots more work to do, but we’re building momentum!