Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are in the midst of the largest blackout in American history. But it appears that a more serious contractor has come to the islands to help resurrect their electrical and power systems.
The Louis Berger Group has won an Army Corps of Engineers contract, worth a potential $860 million, to supply temporary power to these islands after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. A previous contractor has high-tailed it back to Montana in the midst of controversy and lawsuitsconcerning its performance in the aftermath of the devastation.
To appreciate the obstacles facing Berger, it’s important to understand how much worse this disaster is compared to previous hurricanes. In our nation’s history no hurricane ever caused so much infrastructure destruction as Hurricane Maria.
In the words of Hector Pesquera, Puerto Rico's public safety commissioner, ‘There was a brand new island 24 hours after Maria hit. Life as we knew it just collapsed. There was no food, there was no water, there was no gasoline, no diesel, no power, no banks, no ATMs…there was nothing.’
Because of the magnitude of this disaster, emergency power will probably not give way to more permanent power until next summer, and temporary systems will be kept on where needed. There are now 700 temporary generators operating in Puerto Rico providing emergency power until the power system is rebuilt. And until power is restored, all other problems really cannot be solved.
On September 20th, Hurricane Maria made a direct hit as a Category 4 hurricane on the mountainous American island with winds up to 155 mph. Since then, the 3.4 million United States citizens that live on Puerto Rico have had little in the way of a normal life.
To make matters worse, Puerto Rico was first hit by Category 5 Hurricane Irma which left a million people without power. Hurricane Maria then took down 80% of the island’s transmission lines.
Even with some rebuilding and restoration, on November 9th, electricity on the island had sunk from 40% to 18% after another power outage. Hurricane Maria has caused a loss of 1.25 billion hours of electricity supply, and over a thousand lives.
Even the United Nations has scolded the U.S.response to a disaster on our own people, and they particularly noted how our response in Puerto Rico has been so much worse than our response to mainland storms in Texas, New Jersey and Florida. You can blame hurricane-fatigue by Americans, but Puerto Rico became a territory almost 120 years ago, well before Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and Hawai’i became states, which makes our poor response even more appalling.
So all eyes are on Louis Berger. Their division in the United States has already begun work in the islands, deploying hundreds of commercial power generators. Berger has about 900 people working on this crisis - 40% from Puerto Rico and 60% from the mainland. Those workers are supporting the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Postal Service and the Defense Logistics Agency.
Unlike the previous contractor, this is not the first effort by Louis Berger to support communities following major disasters. They aided the Philippines after Typhoon Yolanda hit in 2013, American Samoa after the 2009 tsunami, and helped rebuild the World Trade Center site after 9/11. They were in New York and New Jersey following Superstorm Sandy, not just to restore and rebuild power, water, structures and transportation systems, but to make them more resilient to future disasters.
That means doing things like putting power lines underground - the few underground lines weathered Maria quite well – and making those poles that can’t be subsurface out of high-strength concrete. It also means installing power systems whose fuel and physical structures are resistant to extreme weather events.
Solar and battery companies are sending materials to Puerto Rico to begin building an significant solar sector on the island. Puerto Rico’s young Govenor, Ricardo Rosselló has recently become a champion of renewables, tweeting with Elon Musk before Tesla began installing a solar and battery array to power the island’s Hospital del Nino.
Some solar arrays and wind farms on Puerto Rico made it through the storm fine, but many didn’t. Dams had a tough time as well.
For long-term sustainability beyond 2025, more robust systems should be installed as they come online. A set of new small modular nuclear reactors , with distributed solar and modest storage, could power the entire island cheaply and most reliably, especially during hurricanes.
SMRs will begin construction in the U.S. in the early 2020s, but many exist around the world already. And our military has been the world leader in developing and using small nuclear reactors. A new report from the Nuclear Innovation Alliance outlines ways to accelerate this process.
That’s the real goal here – to remake the infrastructure in Puerto Rico so it will not just survive the next super storm, but be little affected by it.
I asked Tom Lewis, President of the Berger’s U.S. Division, just what he thinks that means for Puerto Rico and how Berger intends to help that future. Lewis was in Puerto Rico last week meeting with elected officials and the Corps.
‘We’re already working with private equity, insurance and power system suppliers on solutions to offer more large scale, modern, sustainable and resilient power solutions for the islands and businesses there, including replacing coal with cleaner natural gas, solar, battery storage and microgrid technologies,’ said Lewis.
The power in Puerto Rico has been the most expensive electricity next to Hawaii, and one of the most carbon-intensive in America. Before Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Rico’s power mix was 48% oil, 30% natural gas, and 18% coal, all imported at significant cost. Four main power plants had a capacity of about 3,500 MW. There are less than 3% renewables.
Berger hopes to see renewables rise in that mix to double digits and that is much more likely by transitioning to a microgrid solution - with the actual mix varying considerably from region to region with differences in weather/seasonality, terrain, available land for solar/wind, etc.
‘Given the pre-existing challenges that the islands already faced, public-private partnerships and the commercial sector in general also can be leveraged and play a key role in the long-term recovery as they can provide additional solutions that government alone would not be able to provide,’ noted Lewis.
Public-private partnerships will be key since Maria sliced across not just the island, but the island’s financial landscape as well. Puerto Rico was already bankrupt from a combination of factors. For years, bond holders extended credit to Puerto Rico, capitalizing on federal, state and municipal tax advantages. Then in 2006, Congress ended these special tax breaks but credit kept flowing in. When the Great recession hit in 2008, Puerto Rico could not recover.
Qualified workers have fled to the mainland. The island has lost more than 20% of its jobs. Retirement funds are defunked. Medicaid funds were cut by Congress.
In July, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority declared bankruptcy. Deferred maintenance on 40-year-old power plants, poor management, and losing 4,000 employees in key jobs such as linemen, power plant operators and mechanics, made the utility completely unprepared for Maria in every way.
With respect to power, Louis Berger has two immediate missions - 1) help get critical power up to support emergency power needs, and 2) advance the grid of the future, especially distributed generation such as renewables, battery storage and microgrids, to become more resistant to extreme weather.
While everyone is talking about a futuristic grid, the immediate needs are paramount. So repairing as much as possible with what was there before is fastest. But with an eye on replacing it with something that could accommodate, or morph into, newer systems.
The government has set priorities for critical facilities like hospitals and water treatment plants, but all areas need attention. This means that urban areas will look pretty much the same. But rural and outlying areas, especially the two populated islands of Vieques and Culebra, will look very different, with microgrids and distributed energy generation including solar (see a USACE video on microgrids in Culebra).
Berger has been scouting a pilot site for a solar hybrid microgrid and they have solar generators arriving on the island that will be provided pro bono to one of the at-need communities furthest from the central grid.
Microgrids are discrete energy systems consisting of distributed energy sources like demand management, storage, generation and loads capable of operating in parallel with, or independently from, the main power grid.
Microgrids are envisioned as necessary to efficiently integrate distributed energy generation sources, such as renewables, as well as make the whole system withstand extreme weather events and other disasters that would take out older larger grids entirely. The modularity and flexibility of microgrids allows mixing and matching, operating independently or together, to deal with disasters that effect different points on the islands differently.
This is vital in places like the Puerto Rico island-municipality of Culebra. Culebra is midway between the main island of Puerto Rico and Saint Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands and was powered by the larger grid on cables that came from Puerto Rico through the other large Puerto Rican island, Vieques. Louis Berger is working with USACE on a pilot microgrid on Culebra that will eventually power the island with no need to connect to the other islands (see figures).
The challenges facing Puerto Rico are immense but can be handled if effective and continuous support is provided. Berger’s mission is part of that.
But the biggest challenge facing the islands is to remain on the radar of Washington, D.C. and on the minds of Puerto Rico’s 300 million fellow citizens of the United States.
Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com
Hurricane Maria devastated the power grid in Puerto Rico, mainly by taking out most of the power lines.
James Conca
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