I agree that it might be better for Puerto Rico to not spend too much trying to restore their poorly maintained, fragile grid, and go straight to investing in distributed generation.
For decades PREPA (the state-owned PR electric utility) resisted using anything but fuel oil and a little coal. They started switching a few plants to NG less than a decade ago (2010?). Finally in the last few years they've brought some wind and PV online too. They have new 4 PV farms that just started producing about a year ago. I visited western and northwestern PR for 2 weeks in August, just before Irma hit. In that time I saw exactly zero, zip, zilch EVs anywhere. I saw no Leaves, no Volts, no Bolts, no Teslas -- none. I'm sure that it doesn't help that PR's average cost per kWh is 20 cents. Some people reportedly pay close to 30 cents per kWh. I asked a few people I met if they had considered PV. Some had, mostly as backup power. FWIW, the little hotel we stayed at did a fair bit of its outdoor lighting with small solar powered garden lights, which were impressively capable. One of the people I spoke with told me that PREPA actually wanted to charge them a monthly fee to have an OFF-GRID system, which makes no sense to me. I haven't been able to corroborate that. In any case, PR could definitely use a PV / EV boost. However, I suspect that this level of storm is the "new normal" for the island. They can probably expect to keep getting category 3-4-5 hurricanes. Do PV mounts exist that can withstand 160mph+ hurricane winds? How do the panels themselves handle having large, heavy things thrown at them by those same winds? David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
