The eco-friendly homes that didn’t lose power after Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico

Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech
·2 min read
23

Story at a glance

  • Thousands of people in Puerto Rico are still without electricity and clean water after Hurricane Fiona struck the island on Sunday.

  • The hurricane reached the island’s southwestern coast a few days before the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria.

  • Two environmentally friendly prototype homes were able to keep the lights on during the storm.

More than 1 million homes and businesses in Puerto Rico are still without power after Hurricane Fiona struck the island on Sunday.

The then Category 1 hurricane drenched parts of the island in more than 20 inches of rain causing flash flooding, mudslides and wiping out power across the entire island.

But there were a few homes that, miraculously, were able to keep the lights on amid the storm: two prototype homes powered by solar energy.

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A New York and Puerto Rico-based nonprofit called the Acacia Network paid to build the homes on land donated by the government and designed by Marvel Architects, according to Fast Company, after Hurricane Maria.

The homes were built with reinforced walls meant to withstand earthquakes and hurricane winds and include design aspects like natural cross ventilation to help keep the home cool, the outlet reported.

They are also equipped with solar panels to provide residents with electricity and features to collect and store filtered rainwater so that occupants can live free of the island’s power and water grid.

In an ironic twist, excessive rainfall brought by hurricanes can damage water supply systems and overburden them to the point where untreated water enters potable water sources, leaving people without anything to drink.

As a result of Hurricane Fiona, more than 437,000 customers of the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, the island’s only water company, do not have clean water, according to the government emergency portal system.

That number means that almost 33 percent of Puerto Rico’s homes and businesses currently do not have drinkable water, two days after the hurricane hit and amid a heat advisory for northern parts of the island.

Before Fiona, power outages on the island were common. When Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico in 2017 it wiped out the island’s antiquated and fragile power grid causing every home and business to lose power. And it has never fully recovered.

To help fix this, a private power company, LUMA Energy, was brought in to control the management and distribution of the island’s electricity.

But power outages remained, and some argue got worse, after LUMA came along, along with higher monthly power bills.

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