Nine years after Hurricane Maria devastated the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques, residents are still dealing with unreliable power from the main island – not so much blackouts but “brownouts,” dips in power that can destroy appliances and electrical infrastructure.
“We’re kind of at the end of the supply line, so anytime there are big power issues on the main island, we end up running into problems,” said Vieques resident Edgar Oscar Ruiz, executive director of Community Through Colors, a local nonprofit focused on emergency relief and long-term resilience. “We have tons of stories of people having issues with their equipment. We hear especially from restaurants that are fed up trying to store food, and then there are the stories of residents, the elderly with medical problems dealing with this – it can be a lot.”
Late last year, Ruiz and a Cornell team took a significant step towards a solution with the delivery of a large, mobile, solar-powered battery that operates independently of the main island’s grid.