Energy grid still biggest challenge 6 years after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s governor says

In the six years after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, Eduardo Colon still remembers the trauma and difficulty of the weeks after.

Colon, who owns Melao Bakery that has expanded to multiple locations across Central Florida in its 15 years, bought over 100 generators to bring to the island in the weeks after the Category 4 storm in 2017 ravaged the island and left many without power for almost a year.

“It was very astonishing. The island looked like a desert from the plane,” Colon said in Spanish. “It looked like the color of the desert because it was all cream color, all the greenery you usually see was gone. The hurricane took it.”

Colon and his wife asked local municipalities for the lists of people who were bedridden and in dire need of a generator to live. He spent weeks handing out money, using his satellite phone to get relatives on the island in contact with each other, and getting help from neighbors with gas to drive generators to those in need.

Today, Colon’s generators help out with the rolling blackouts, a sign of a still-frail energy grid, which collapse under Maria’s 131 to 155 mph winds. After Maria swept through the 100-mile-long U.S. Territory, 2,975 people lost their lives. Last year, Hurricane Fiona hit the island causing widespread flooding in the south and washing away a bridge installed during Hurricane Maria recovery.

Many in Puerto Rico are still living with damage caused by Maria and six years later the island is still suffering from a lack of infrastructure, electric grid failures, brain drain and is coming back from bankruptcy.

Puerto Rico’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, visiting Central Florida this week, told the Orlando Sentinel recovery from Maria will take another eight years to complete.

Pierluisi said when he took office in 2021 he found the island had few permanent structures built with FEMA funds in the three years after Maria.

Going through FEMA’s Public Assistance Alternative Procedures program took a lot of time, he said, because FEMA worked on a reimbursement model.

Pierluisi said his administration asked for FEMA funds to be advanced to get reconstruction off the ground faster rather than reimbursed and it agreed.

The electricity grid is Puerto Rico’s biggest challenge, even six years after Maria, Pierluisi said.

“You cannot even transform the system if it’s not stable,” Pierluisi said. “We cannot repair or replace generator units if too many of them are failing and we were barely meeting demand.”

Pierluisi said the grid could not handle shutting down one plant to fix it.

“So now, we’ll have 350 megawatts of power being provided by FEMA to stabilize our system while we enhance it and improve it using FEMA funds,” Pierlusisi said.

The plan is to bring in additional generators and diversify the energy grid using renewable energy such as solar panels, Pierluisi said.

“Our government is promoting solar, industry-scale renewable energy projects, mostly solar farms, because we have to,” Pierluisi said. “We cannot rely simply on people or businesses installing solar systems on their rooftops. That’s not going to be enough.”

Puerto Rico’s goal is to generate 40% of the island’s energy from renewable sources by the end of 2025, a goal that Pierluisi said is currently out of reach but something he is working toward.

“We now have about, I would say, roughly 12 industry-scale, renewable energy projects in the pipeline already approved, which we expect that within two years they will be operating,” Pierluisi said.

Pierluisi said the energy system is in a better position to handle another hurricane than it was six years ago but the reason for turning to solar will be mainly to help with sky-high costs associated with fossil fuels and it being better for the environment.

“Slowly but surely we’re becoming more resilient and FEMA is better prepared now,” Pierluisi said. “You learn from experiences and that’s what’s happening in Puerto Rico.”

Fernando Rivera, the director of the Puerto Rican Research Hub at the University of Central Florida, said Hurricane Maria only lifted the veil off the problems that the island already had.

The lack of infrastructure and Hurricane Maria encouraged a mass exodus from the island, Rivera said.

Puerto Rico’s population is still declining. It has declined by 2% from 2020 through 2022 and currently 23.5% of the population is above the age of 65, according to the U.S. Census latest estimates.

The island is in need of hurricane recovery infrastructure and health care, he said.

“Obviously, Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria had plenty of challenges with infrastructure, with the exodus of people, the exodus of professionals and that continues to happen,” Rivera said. “But one of the things that we found also after the hurricane was also issues with mental health or trauma and those things have not been resolved.”

Rivera said the aging population is concerning for the future of the island and for those who left behind aging family members.

“Soon enough we’ll have over a third of the population over 65, what’s that going to mean for the urban population?” Rivera said. “Hurricane Maria was probably an occasion where Puerto Rico hit rock bottom. … I think it might be time to reimagine Puerto Rico.”

Rivera helped edit a study called the Analysis of Pre- and Post-Disaster Management and Recovery in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria. Published in 2021, it found that emergency plans were put in place in many municipalities after Maria that did not exist before.

“So there’s sort of a positive trajectory out there, but to say that Puerto Rico has completely recovered from the back of Hurricane Maria … there continues to be some challenges out there,” Rivera said.

Reconstruction is a major sector for growth of Puerto Rico’s economy along with tourism, Pierluisi said.

The governor, who is up for reelection in 2024, said he sees a new future for Puerto Rico.

“It’s a new day,” Pierluisi said. “We come from a past of difficulties and still, you know, it’s not like we have fixed all the problems or that rebuilding is totally done, no, but we’re moving in the right direction.”