PR100 Final Results Public Release Event (Text Version)
This is a text version of the video PR100 Final Results Public Release Event.
This is a presentation and discussion of final results from the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transition to 100% Renewable Energy (PR100) Study.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: All right. Good afternoon, everybody, in the room with me here in San Juan, Puerto Rico and also those of you who are joining online from all across the states and Puerto Rico. My name is Charlotte Gossett Navarro. I am the chief director of the Hispanic Federation in Puerto Rico, and I'll be serving as your moderator of this event this afternoon.
And I'd like to invite you officially to the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study, otherwise known as the PR100, final results. And so if we can move to the next slide before we begin, I want to review a few basics with you. Well, there I am. That basically covered. So, jump to the next slide.
Housekeeping
OK. And this is particularly important for those of you who are joining online. Today, we have interpretation between English and Spanish. All you have to do is toggle with the little globe that you're going to see there at the bottom of your Zoom to be able to select to listen to the full interpretation of this event in Spanish. In addition, we have American sign language available for you today.
We want to note, if you are connecting online since this is a webinar, your audio and your video will be muted. However, you can use the chat box and the Q&A to be able to submit any thoughts that you have during the event that that will also be moderated. And in addition, on a little side note for those in the room and particularly our panelists, we do have our timekeeper here who is supporting right in the center with Keisha. So, keep an eye on her when you are up here in the front of the room.
I want to share that I'm really excited to be with you. Hispanic Federation has not only had the privilege of serving as a stakeholder in the PR100 Advisory Group, but also in a larger role of supporting the stakeholder engagement throughout this event. It's been from our perspective and work that we've done here, an unprecedented amount of stakeholder engagement that has happened all across Puerto Rico in person, more than 100 different participants in that advisory group. And we're so excited that all of that participation has led to the results that we're going to hear today. If we can jump to the next slide.
Agenda
Our agenda for today is pretty straightforward. We're in our welcome. We're going to hear some opening remarks. We're going to go then to the final results summary and then into a discussion on the implementation of what do we do with these results. Then we'll close with a Q&A.
And our next slide.
Opening Remarks
Then with that, we're going to hear from a panel that includes opening remarks from Agustin Carbo, the DOE director of the Puerto Rico Grid Modernization and Recovery Team. Then from Secretary Jennifer Granholm of the U.S. Department of Energy. From David Warrington, Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, our regional administrator. And finally, from the Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi. So I'd like to first invite up Agustin Carbo.
>>Agustin Carbo: [Speaking in Spanish]. Thank you for being here at this important date for all of us at the Department of Energy. We are thrilled that after two years, we have a product that confirms that we can achieve the goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050. And that's great. And I think that's what everyone was really excited about. But also, I think it's important that Secretary Granholm has been so active in this process and I thank you for that. As a Puerto Rican, I feel that the way you've handled every issue related to energy in Puerto Rico has been paramount to everything that has happened on the island and how we're moving forward.
And I think we've been really cohesive with the administration of Governor Pierluisi to make sure that things move forward as they should. And not for least, I need to recognize six of our national labs who really put this together and met with over 100 people from Puerto Rico: stakeholders from the island, experts that know the different perspectives and necessities of the Puerto Ricans who live after Hurricane Maria, all the obstacles and challenges of having no power. So with no further introductions, I want to make sure that I invite the person who is leading all these efforts from the Department of Energy, Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
>>Jennifer Granholm: OK. Thank you, Agustin. Thank you all for being here. So many of those in this room have been instrumental in getting us to where we are right now with this study over the past two years. And I just want to acknowledge you personally. And as I go through, if you're on Zoom, feel free to announce yourself on the chat.
If you are from the Hispanic Federation, please stand and allow us to give you a applause for their incredible work. Thank you.
If you are from Governor Pierluisi's team, please stand. Some of them are already standing on the side. That would mean you too, Gov. Bravo for the work we have done together. Thank you.
If you're from the PR100 Advisory Group or the Steering Committee, please stand. A big group. Yes, thank you so much.
And of course, I know that Agustin already acknowledged the national labs but if you are from any of the national labs that worked on this study, please stand. Yes, look at them. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I just want to—I'm going to be very brief here because we want to get to the juice. And I know that folks in this room know the story of PR100 backwards and forwards, but we also have hundreds of people who are watching virtually who might benefit just from a brief refresher.
We all know, of course, in 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the Puerto Rico energy system and the destruction was unimaginable. But despite and because and amid the heartbreak, Puerto Ricans also saw an amazing opportunity to build a new energy system that was resilient and independent and clean.
And in response, two big things happened. The federal government allocated to Puerto Rico billions of dollars to rebuild the grid. And then in 2019, the people of Puerto Rico enshrined a new goal, which was 100% clean renewable energy by 2050 into law.
So, at the Department of Energy, our assignment was to help align those efforts, particularly the future grid. And thanks to our partners at FEMA, we launched the PR100 Study. An incredible amount of work has gone into this over the past two years. We've, for example, applied the modeling capabilities, the analysis from our labs, the best in the world. The world's fastest supercomputers allowed us to model the complex Puerto Rico energy system in record-breaking time.
We also partnered with local entities. Thank you for those who are watching who participated in that like the Hispanic Federation, the University of Puerto Rico, our Advisory Group to make sure that our work reflected the priorities of people in Puerto Rico across on the ground, in the mountains, throughout the island, I'll just say. And today, I am pleased that we are coming to you with answers.
So I know Agustin said this too, but this is the applause line, y'all. If you take away anything from today, Puerto Rico, know that Puerto Rico's 100% clean energy future is 100% possible. Yes. Now, you'll hear a lot of facts and you'll see that there are places we've got to work. For example, we want to make sure that we get to 40% by 2025. Forty percent clean energy. That's going to be—we're working hard and that we've got to work on that even harder. We want to make sure that as we go through, rates are not impacted and that's very, very important. This study serves as a call to action for future actions.
We've been listening to the study in its draft form as we've gone along and we have been taking action, like making sure that battery storage is added to the grid, making sure we have our Programa Accesso Solar, which is $1 billion that Congress gave us to put on rooftop solar for the most disadvantaged. Vivienda is doing a similar program to make sure that we have access on the island for the most disadvantaged people, especially last-mile communities, people who are medically—who are dependent on devices that require electricity, et cetera.
All of these actions that we're taking, is because we've been informed by what this study was going to say. So very important to know that we must, while this is possible, 100%, it is not going to happen on its own. We have to roll up our sleeves, we have to get this done together, it is a call to action for all of us, right? Yes.
So I'm thrilled to be here to help introduce this. I'm going to hand this back to Charlotte, but I am 100% all in. On behalf of President Biden and the Biden administration, we are partners with Puerto Rico in making sure that you achieve your goal of 100% renewable energy on a resilient grid. Thank you so much.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you so much, Secretary. I would like to invite up our next speaker, who is David Warrington from FEMA regional 2, our regional administrator.
>>David Warrington: Clearly underdressed for this occasion, but in typical FEMA gear. First and foremost, it is an honor to be here today to see the results of this collaborative effort. The immense team and the amount of resources put into this study is unprecedented.
As you all know, the impacts of Hurricane Maria 2017 hurricane season really unprecedented. It impacted every single person on this island. Puerto Rico, jointly with the federal government, we rose to the historic occasion in the aftermath to come up with the aggressive goal of being 100% renewable by 2050.
The effort started in 2019. FEMA funded the initiative. Obviously, collaborative with our partners. Subsequent to that, we realized the need to stabilize the energy grid. So, we've invested over—obligated over $10 billion towards stabilizing the energy grid to get to the point where renewables are possible to accept the next generation of power in Puerto Rico.
It does lay the groundwork for the development and the reliable, sustainable system, and the modern infrastructure will be able to handle the ever-expanding challenges, as we all know, that climate change poses. I really do want to offer a special thank you to Secretary Granholm and Governor Pierluisi for your partnership as well as Administrator Criswell who could not be here today as an interagency group just to make this PR100 Study possible.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't thank my over 1,000 FEMA employees that remain on the island since the 2017 hurricane season. I'm immensely proud of the work that my team does in partnership with the territory and all of the interagency partners. And it wouldn't be possible without each and every one of you. Thank you very much.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you. And now last but not least, I would like to invite up the Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi.
>>Pedro Pierluisi: Thank you, Charlotte. And [speaking in Spanish]. Good afternoon to all. It is a pleasure to be here with Secretary Granholm for the presentation of the final Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transition to 100% Renewable Energy, what we call the PR100 Study. On behalf of the people of Puerto Rico, I thank each and every person involved in the study for working on this report.
I also thank the Biden-Harris administration as well as Secretary Granholm. And let me stop here. I want a big round of applause for the Biden-Harris cabinet member who's been in Puerto Rico the most, and not for pleasure, for official business, Jennifer Granholm.
I also want to thank the DOE's team. You've been amazing, the national labs, and FEMA as well. From Deanne Criswell to everybody, the 1,000 strong FEMA personnel on the island. For the unwavering support in helping us achieve our energy transformation goals. I will continue my brief remarks in Spanish given that there are translation services available. And I would like the local media, if they're present, to understand fully what I'll say now.
[Speaking in Spanish]
The energy system is one of our highest priorities and is essential for our socioeconomic development. Consistent with our public policy, the PR100 Study will support our efforts to continue integrating all the different initiatives we are carrying out, including the promotion of residential solar systems, large-scale renewable energy projects, microgrids, and energy storage, with the aim of achieving the nearest goal: that 40% of our energy generation comes from renewable sources by the end of next year.
Furthermore, we reaffirm that the reconstruction, strengthening, and modernization of our electrical grid, as well as the stability of our generating capacity, are key to integrating renewable energy into our system. We are convinced that the goal of achieving 100% of our energy from renewable sources is attainable.
It is important to note that prudent and strategic actions are required to achieve this, such as those we are undertaking. I will now summarize the steps we are taking towards our collective goal. We already have over 110,000 individual solar systems integrated into our electrical grid. And this number continues to grow at a rate of 4,000 additional systems per month. In addition to this, we have 9,000 reconstructed residences from the R3 program of CDBGDR with solar systems and batteries, 1,500 small and medium-sized enterprises in the process of installing solar systems with ARPA and CDBGDR funds, 15,000 additional solar systems that will be installed with CDBG Meet funds, as well as photovoltaic panel and battery projects that will be financed by the federal Department of Energy.
Through this year's Law Number 10, we have extended the net metering program until 2030 to facilitate distributed generation on our island. Additionally, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau has already approved the necessary agreements and regulations for energy transfer within our electrical grid. The Battery Emergency Demand Response Program has been implemented, under which we maximize the use of individual system batteries to support our energy system during peak demand hours.
On the other hand, we are advancing in the reconstruction of the electrical grid and improvements to our generating plants, as we already have 170 projects under construction or in auction, with 23 already completed. Regarding large-scale renewable energy projects, we currently have 200 megawatts of available generation. And we expect to have a minimum of an additional 800 megawatts in production by the end of next year. These projects will be complemented with batteries capable of storing 350 megawatts per month.
We are promoting agrivoltaic projects that involve irrigation systems, along with solar panels and batteries, to enhance the productivity of our agricultural farms. We have also reached an agreement with FEMA to extend the temporary generation of 300 megawatts, which provides stability to the system while maintenance and improvements are being carried out on our generating plants.
Finally, the Energy Bureau has approved the installation of battery systems capable of storing 430 megawatts of energy in our generating plants, which will provide greater stability to our system. This is just a summary of the multiple initiatives that are part of our integrated strategy to achieve our energy transformation. These efforts will allow us to have nearly 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy generation in our electricity system by the end of 2025, including the generation provided by individual solar systems. This is undoubtedly a significant advancement towards the transformation of our electrical system. And we will continue to work with all sectors with the sense of urgency that our people deserve. Everyone in Puerto Rico can be sure of that.
[Speaking in English]
I reiterate my appreciation to Secretary Granholm and her team as well as FEMA, and all other stakeholders for their support and commitment to Puerto Rico's energy future. Muchas gracias. Thank you.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you to everyone for those opening remarks. We are going to begin transitioning now to the conversation about the details of the PR100. And to share the study overview with us, I would like to invite up Director Martin Keller of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
>>Martin Keller: So, Madam Secretary, Governor, it's a great honor I think from all the national labs to be here. Governor and Madam Secretary, what you said is exactly right. I think this is not the end, I think this is really now the beginning. So, I have a few slides just to set the stage before we really dive into the details.
What is the PR100 Study?
So, what is the PR100 Study? So I think there's two or three things coming together, which now is helping us to really accelerate this. Number one, Madam Secretary talked about this, we have the computing powers now to do this massive calculations in addition to have now the models, and can do more than just having a model.
Now, you're creating this implementation plans. You really show the roadmap what we need to do to go to 100% renewable energy. So this study was coordinated in an effort with FEMA and DOE. So NREL was leading this. A lot of other national laboratories working really in partnerships to accelerate this. And also, I think what is so interesting on this study, it's more than just a scientific study. It is really done with the community, with input from the community. With so many people here in Puerto Rico to help to shape this and move this forward. So the next slide shows you the big overview.
PR100 Study Overview
So, this was motivated by the Policy Act of 2019. Again, Puerto Rico going to 100% renewable energy. So it's also allocation by nearly $20 billion in federal funds for disaster recovery.
So the study really shows, yes, we can do this we can build this 100% renewable energy grid but also in a resilient way that is safe and secure into the future. So this illuminates immediate and long-term investments needed to achieve reliability while pursuing Puerto Rico's energy goals and addressing critical energy needs. And of course, the benefits we expecting including improvements in safety, security, health, and economic opportunity for Puerto Rico. So this will accelerate Puerto Rico forward in our opinion. Next slide, please.
PR100 Tasks Led by Six Contributing National Laboratories
So, what I said earlier, this was really done in deep, deep partnership and I really feel what we've done here in partnership in Puerto Rico can be a model to many other places. We can bring this partnerships forward. So again, this was done on—with DOE, and FEMA, but then with NREL, Argonne, Berkeley Lab, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia. And this, again, is another thank you to all the labs, that this was done in partnerships, where the labs came together, worked to really accelerate and bring this forward. Also very important, so many different groups inside the community. Also the Advisory Committee, which was very, very important to accelerate this. And with this, I give it back and then we diving into the depths of the study. So thank you very much.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Before we begin our panel, I'd like to share with you a brief video that's going to go a little bit deeper into what the PR100 Study is.
[Video begins]
>>Narrator: Over the years, the people of Puerto Rico have endured extreme weather events and power outages. But a deadly record was set in 2017, when back-to-back hurricanes destroyed around 80% of Puerto Rico's electric grid and resulted in thousands of lives lost.
>>Maritere Padilla-Rodríguez, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Hispanic Federation: After Hurricane Maria we lost more than 3,000 lives during the longest blackout of U.S. history. Those are too many lives. That cannot happen again.
>>Narrator: With a unique opportunity to build back better, Puerto Rico passed Act 17, a policy to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.
>>Maritere Padilla-Rodríguez, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Hispanic Federation: But how we get there? What are the technical elements that we need to get to that transition, without forgetting energy justice and resiliency?
[Logos of Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory]
>>Narrator: With funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Energy and six national laboratories have identified potential pathways forward in the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study, or PR100.
[People in Puerto Rico speaking with microphones in different meeting settings]
PR100 is not only a reflection of world-class, in-depth modeling and analysis by researchers. It’s a reflection of two years of engagement with local stakeholders who hold a diversity of perspectives.
>>Jennifer M. Granholm, Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy: Over the past year, I’ve visited communities across Puerto Rico, listening to residents’ visions for what a cleaner and more resilient energy future could look like. Now, PR100 is ready to help make them bring those visions to life.
>>Deanne Criswell, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency: FEMA has been on the ground every day helping to support Puerto Rico’s recovery and reach its energy goals. The PR100 Study that we helped fund is one of many ways we’re working with Puerto Rico to find equitable and sustainable ways to reach a 100% clean energy future.
[Three graphics represent PR100’s Economic, Equitable, and Maximum scenarios, in which Puerto Rico incorporates renewable energy technologies with existing homes, buildings, mountains, trees, and water]
>>Narrator: PR100 provides Puerto Rican decisionmakers with an unprecedented view of their current and future energy system, and it identifies three potential pathways forward for Puerto Rico to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2050.
>>Eduardo Bhatia, Former Senator, Senate of Puerto Rico: We have more information on the Puerto Rico energy system than we have ever had in 100 years, and that's wonderful. We know about the winds, we know about the water, we know about agrivoltaics. There's so much. There’s so much in terms of information that we have to digest.
>>Narrator: By bringing stakeholders from across the government, community groups, and the energy sector to the table, the PR100 Study has created connections that will help Puerto Rico on its journey.
>>Jonathan Castillo Polanco, Green Energy and Critical Services Manager,
Hispanic Federation: [in Spanish] The process of integrating communities and various sectors has essentially helped us choose a path that is sustainable and fair for all individuals involved in this process.
>>Narrator: The PR100 Study concluded that Puerto Rico can indeed reach its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050. While the transition will not happen overnight, there is much that can be done to achieve a reliable grid for Puerto Rico in the short term while integrating more renewables onto the system over time. Researchers created an implementation roadmap outlining near- and long-term actions necessary to make this renewable energy goal a reality. It is up to the people of Puerto Rico, now, to decide how they move forward.
>>Gerardo Cosme, Consulting Engineer, Puerto Rico Independent Office of Consumer Protection: [in Spanish] This study is definitely the foundation for many decisions that are being made or will be made in the near future, and that are crucial to achieving a successful transition to renewable energy. Knowledge is power, and this is definitely the foundation for making the right decisions.
>>Narrator: We’re already seeing remarkable progress toward a more reliable, resilient, and renewable grid for Puerto Ricans.
>>Shay Bahramirad, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Asset Management and Capital Program, LUMA Energy: We have hired in the past 12 months 250 recent graduates from six universities in Puerto Rico, and the engagement with different experts from the national labs, it's going to help us develop the talent that we need in the next decade to make the dream of, or the plan of, PR100 happen.
>>Narrator: The journey of Puerto Rico’s power system from widespread wreckage to renewable and resilient rebirth could be an enduring example for others to follow. Puerto Ricans deserve a reliable grid, and a 100% clean energy future is on the horizon. Learn more at pr100.gov.
[Video ends]
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: And with that video, as our introduction, I'd like to invite up our first panel who will discuss the PR100 results. We have as our moderator Murali Baggu from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Robin Burton and Nate Blair, also from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Marcelo Elizondo from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Matthew Lave from Sandia National Laboratories. And Peter Cappers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
PR100 Final Results Panel
>>Murali Baggu: Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for taking the time to really get into some of the details of the results. We'll try to give you a sample again. These are some of the researchers that worked on the project. We are all here to really provide you a sample of these results. It will be really hard to fit in a two year study into 20 minutes. So, we are going to just scratch the surface a little bit here and try to really provide quick highlights.
Guiding Questions
What you're seeing on the screen there are some of the guiding questions that we used over the past two years. Really, we started with this back in February of 2022, exactly two years back. And we'll try to attempt to answer these based on what we found out in the study. I'll start with the stakeholder priorities, especially when it comes to renewable resources, total demand electricity, and protecting agricultural land. Let me switch this to Robin here to see if she can provide some updates on those areas.
We engaged diverse stakeholder groups.
>>Robin Burton: Thanks very much, Murali. Hang on. All right. Thanks so much, Murali. Such a pleasure to be here with all of you today, in person and online. It's not working. All right. How about now? OK. Great. Thank you. So, we've heard recognition of all of the stakeholders who provided input into the study and I'll just echo again, it was almost two years to the day that we kicked off engagement with an Advisory Group who's been with us for the whole journey. Helping to shape the study, to provide inputs all along the way. DOE convened a Steering Committee that has also been providing input all throughout the study. As Secretary Granholm mentioned, we engaged with communities all across Puerto Rico to really understand about their experiences and what they would like to see and what they would not like to see in the future energy system.
Extensive stakeholder engagement and commitment to energy justice drove study design and modeling assumptions.
We heard a lot about priorities from stakeholders. We understand that many people are interested in a highly distributed system with rooftop solar and storage to provide resilience. There's also interest in larger-scale projects. We understand that for many people, preservation of agricultural land is a very important priority. And we heard many commonalities in what we heard from people and also some diverging opinions. And so we recognize that these various opinions need to be taken into account and really, all voices brought to the table and thinking about what comes next for Puerto Rico. I want to echo the appreciation that we've already heard in the room for the tremendous partnership of Hispanic Federation and Puerto Rico and the University of Puerto Mayagüez for their incredible contributions to the study overall.
Puerto Rico has enough renewable resource potential to meet its electricity demand now and through 2050.
So, we asked a number of questions as we were starting the study. Does Puerto Rico have enough renewable resource to reach 100% renewable energy by 2050? And the answer is a resounding yes. We looked at the technical potential of a variety of different technologies and found that the potential annual generation of wind, solar, and some other emerging technologies are more than sufficient by more than 10-fold to meet the demand in electricity today and through 2050. Importantly, we found that the mature technologies of solar and wind are sufficient to meet the goals.
Electricity demand is expected to decrease by 2050 in the Mid Case trajectory, based primarily on population and economic forecasts.
We also looked at how demand for electricity is expected to change over time in Puerto Rico as we were modeling out into the future. And we found that the Mid Case projection for electricity demand in Puerto Rico over time is expected to decline slightly, taking into consideration things like changes in population, the economy, and climate. In addition, we incorporated into that demand projection expectations around demand for electric vehicles, both cars and trucks, and adoption of energy efficiency measures. We also then modeled what we call a stress case, looking at different options of how demand might change into the future. And we expect that reality may fall somewhere between those two options.
Utility-scale solar PV potential capacity on non-agricultural land is sufficient to meet electric load to 2050.
Listening carefully to feedback about the importance of preserving agricultural land, we define two different options for how land could be used in developing larger-scale projects. The two maps you see here are called Less Land and More Land. The yellow shaded area would be developable area. And so in both models, we've excluded roadways, water bodies, protected areas, and a key agricultural reserve. And then in the Less Land scenario, we also excluded all areas identified as for agricultural use by the 2015 Land Use Plan. So, we used these two options when we were modeling out possible scenarios looking at development on both types of land. We did find that agricultural land or the Less Land scenario land available is sufficient to meet demand. That's one of the key findings.
What are possible pathways to achieving Puerto Rico’s 100% renewable energy target by 2050?
>>Murali Baggu: Thank you very much, Robin. I think having to look at the potential and others, let me ask this question to Nate. My next question to Nate is, what do you think, based on what we heard from Robin here, the possible pathways to meeting Act 17 or 100% renewable energy targets by 2050?
Based on extensive stakeholder input, we modeled three scenarios to achieve Puerto Rico’s renewable energy future.
[Three graphics represent scenarios in which Puerto Rico incorporates renewable energy technologies with existing homes, buildings, mountains, trees, and water. Scenario 1 is Economic, Scenario 2 is Equitable, and Scenario 3 is Maximum.]
>>Nate Blair: Thank you, Murali. Hope this doesn't count against my time. So as Robin said, we got a lot of stakeholder input. And I think it's pretty clear to see that the amount and the interaction between rooftop PV and storage that provides local resiliency with the rest of the grid is a key factor in the forward-looking approach that we took. And so we looked at three different scenarios that reflect three different levels of rooftop PV and storage. “Economic” looks at who would adopt from normal bill savings and some value of resiliency. “Equitable” adds in people who are in remote areas and very low income, and then scenario three, or the “Maximum” scenario, looks at what happens if everyone gets a rooftop PV and storage system to meet their critical loads.
Adoption of distributed (rooftop) solar and storage capacity is projected to increase considerably in all scenarios.
What's the result? As you can see on the graph on the left, we get significant adoption of rooftop PV and storage across all three of these scenarios with a range of about 2,500 megawatts to over 6,000 megawatts, which is 370% to 900% of where we are at today. And so that's a significant growth across all three of these scenarios. With Scenario 2 for these remote communities and very low income people, only adds about 11% to 14% of the PV capacity that is present in Scenario 1. And then Scenario 3, roughly doubles the deployment in scenario one across these different scenarios. So, we get a really significant level of distributed PV.
Multiple gigawatts of solar, land-based wind, and storage are needed to meet 40% renewable energy, achieve system reliability, and minimize outages.
And then as we head forward, we take those projections and insert them in a different model also running on our fancy supercomputer that I heard about. And look at what is it then take to get to 40% for the overall grid, including this distributed PV generation. And what we see is that we need to do two things. One, get to 40% renewables but also get to a reliable grid with minimal outages and adequate reserve capacity. And so that we have what we need to really move forward across the island. And as we do that at that 40% mark, if we could go back one slide, you'll see that what we add primarily is utility-scale PV and storage in addition to the rooftop deployment we had before. We add some wind and then we add a significant amount of utility scale storage as well. Next slide.
When 100% renewable generation is achieved, the technology mix includes energy storage and biodiesel engines to meet demand during periods of low wind and solar output.
Where we land then as we move through beyond 40% maintaining this reliable grid through 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and on to 100%, we continue to add additional renewables and retire fossil plants so that we get across the 12 different scenario combinations that we looked at. Levels of wind that increase, utility-scale PV increases. And then as we get to 100% we add bio- diesel engines actually to provide flexible capacity as we finally retire the rest of the fossil plants. Thank you.
What changes to the transmission and distribution grid infrastructure would be needed to achieve 100% renewable energy?
>>Murali Baggu: Thank you very much, Nate. I think we heard on the resources side and certainly scenarios, let's move on to the transmission and distribution infrastructure. So Marcelo and Matt, I'm probably looking at you especially to see what you guys see as impacts of getting 100% renewable energy on transmission and distribution infrastructure. Let's start with Marcelo on transmission.
>>Marcelo Elizondo: Thank you, Murali.
>>Robin Burton: It's on.
Transmission system moves bulk electricity from generation to load centers.
>>Marcelo Elizondo: OK. Thank you, Murali. Yes we need great upgrades and advanced controls mainly to get to 100% renewables. But first, let me mention how the transmission system looks like in Puerto Rico. So the transmission system is used to move electricity between regions across Puerto Rico. And there are three voltage levels: 230 kV levels is the highest one, we have 115 kilovolts level, and 38 kilovolts levels that are closer to the end loads.
System upgrades, advanced forecasting, operating reserve management, and grid supporting control are needed for reliability.
What some of the things that we found in this analysis is that the 38 kV network is insufficient to accommodate the projected renewables that we study. And you can see there are problems with overloads of the 38 kV network and those overloads increase as we get closer to 100% renewables. We also identified problems with voltage control. And to solve those problems, there will have to be upgrades particularly to that part of the transmission system. There is also— we saw that there is lack of diversity in the projected results because it's dominated by solar and that can present challenges—due to high forecast errors, there could be operational challenges.
So then advanced forecasting methods are very important and as well as advanced ways of operating the system such as managing reserves. We also found that a battery energy storage with advanced control will be key for Puerto Rico, particularly things like grid-forming inverters that can establish frequency and voltage in the grid and help the grid operate with high penetration of renewables can be important. And these technologies can also allow batteries and renewables to contribute to grid recovery with black start as well. And in the report, you will find also eight types of analysis on power flow and power system stability analysis in a very large chapter, I believe.
Distribution system distributes electricity to users.
>>Murali Baggu: Let's move on to Matt on the distribution system side.
>>Matthew Lave: Thanks. So like Marcelo mentioned, I'm going to start with just a description of what the distribution system is. So, the analogy I like to use is transmission is equivalent roughly to the highway system for roads, and distribution are the local roads that would actually go to your house. Same thing with the electric distribution system, these are the wires that would go to your house, to your business to serve electricity to customers. Across Puerto Rico, there are actually about 1,300 distribution feeders. Each of them are about a few miles long typically. And they're at much lower voltages than Marcelo was just talking about 4,000 to 13,000 volts. So, then I'll talk about some of the impacts.
Large amounts of distributed renewables can exceed capacity on distribution feeders, but storage and controls can help.
So, when you have a lot of rooftop solar on these distribution feeders, what happens is you have more and more and more generation during the middle of the day when the sun is shining. And this plot on the left shows that what that means is that you end up getting a net load profile, which is the consumption by devices electric consumption and then minus that solar generation, you get a net load profile that looks more and more like this U-shape where in the middle of the day, it goes very low. This causes a lot of challenges to operating the distribution system, including issues with voltage, line overloading, and some issues with reverse power flow going back into the transmission system. That's the challenge. The good news is that there are solutions for this. One of the solutions we investigated in PR100 is looking at leveraging storage, both leveraging customer-owned storage, and then also leveraging possible new sort of utility controlled storage. That's what the map on the right shows. These blue dots are possible new storage locations on one sample feeder. And we found really good results with this. We found that by implementing storage in an effective way, you can really increase the hosting capacity on these feeders and accommodate the penetrations that Nate has been talking about of as we get to 2050, these really high penetrations of distributed renewables. So that was good news.
How can Puerto Rico ensure that the new energy system is resilient to extreme weather events?
>>Murali Baggu: While I have you on the grid infrastructure, let me actually pose a question to Marcelo here. How can we ensure that the new proposed or upgraded proposed upgrades on the system will make sure it is resilient to the extreme events?
Grid recovery after hurricanes can be improved if all energy system resources participate in the recovery process.
>>Marcelo Elizondo: With respect to resilience, what we found that is very important for Puerto Rico for all of the resources to contribute to grid recovery if possible. And we ran models, we analyzed 100 hurricane simulations, and grid recoveries. So these simulations estimate the damage to the grid from hurricanes, and also simulate the recovery of the systems. And we feed into these models data from the previous hurricanes to be able to approximate these models to the reality. We use these type of tools for planning purposes. Our objective was to compare scenarios, see, from the different futures that the Puerto Rican grid have, which ones could be good to—it could be good to or could be better or easier to recover or more difficult to recover.
And what we found is the scenarios with the most distributed energy resources are recovered faster but for this, a change in paradigm is required because it is not usual that renewables and energy storage contribute and especially distributed renewables is not usual that they contribute to the recovery and to the black start of the system. So here in Puerto Rico, moving towards all of those resources to contribute to the recovery is very important. And also, the locations of the utility scale, the resources is also important. In the report, you will also find a social burden analysis to estimate the level of effort of the communities to get access to critical services that that can be also very important to use in resilience analysis.
What are the projected impacts of the energy transition on jobs and the local economy?
>>Murali Baggu: Thank you very much, Marcelo. Let's move on to the interesting and important topic, which is more on economics. I think to really complete the whole study, we actually looked at what the impacts on economics really looks like. So Pete, if you don't mind, can you shed some light on especially what this energy transition means to jobs and local economy?
Construction and installation efforts are projected to support 6 times more jobs than operations and maintenance activities.
>>Peter Cappers: Yeah, sure thing, Murali. So as you can tell from my colleagues, there's a tremendous amount of investment and expenditure that's going to be required to ultimately reach this 100% renewable energy goal. One of the first things we looked at to answer this particular question is, what would be the implications of all of the investment in four different types of renewable resources to meet that RPS requirement? Utility-scale solar, utility-scale wind, residential rooftop solar, and non-residential rooftop solar. And particularly looking at the jobs associated with all of those investments. And what we found first and foremost was that, to just build all of these resources is going to create six times as many jobs as it takes to operate and maintain those going forward. But the challenge with construction is it's temporary and the jobs associated with them therefore come and go. And what we see from the RPS requirement is that schedule really creates a substantial amount of boom and bust cycle in those construction-related jobs. Now, this stands in pretty stark contrast to the operations and maintenance associated with these assets that have 20- or 30-year useful lifetimes. And there we see a slow trajectory, upwards trajectory of a stable workforce. And so one of the important implications of this among others that are identified in the report is exactly this issue of workforce development and how is Puerto Rico going to meet these workforce needs over the next 25 years, 30 years. Now, the next thing we looked at was the fact that, well, all of these investments, all of this expenditures, they have to be paid by someone. So first and foremost, we assumed that all of the distributed systems, the rooftop PV systems, well, those would be—those costs would be covered by the people who actually benefit from them directly, which are the folks who are investing them, buying them, and putting them on their houses or their businesses.
Utility rates could increase in the near-term if no action is taken to mitigate.
Second, we assumed at a very high level that all of the transmission and distribution-related investments to just get the grid back to where it was and make it reliable and resilient, those costs would be covered in a general sense by federal recovery dollars. And that leaves all of the rest of these investments generation, as well as integration costs and those are going to be covered by the utility and therefore, by its ratepayers through the rates that they pay. And so what we found was that in the first five years, to move from a grid that is highly unreliable to a grid that is very reliable regardless of the type of resources that are on it, whether it is renewables or non-renewables, is going to be very expensive. And associated with that then is going to be large rate increases. But once Puerto Rico gets to a level with a grid that they deserve, a reliable grid that they deserve, at that point, costs begin to go down from the utilities’ perspective. Because we're now replacing higher-cost fossil fuel resources with renewable resources. And so what we know is that regulators and policy makers are already taking actions and will continue to take actions to mitigate those rate impacts. Now, last but not least is taking those two effects together.
Gains in real household income are projected to occur in the long-run.
As you make investments, it creates jobs, it creates benefits to the macro economy, whereas as rates go up, it sort of undermines that additional income that inures to folks who are getting those new jobs. And so what we see again in that first period to reach this reliable grid is unfortunately, the rate impacts undermine at least from a household income standpoint undermine the additional jobs and income that is coming in from all of these new positions that are being created. But in the long run, what we see is as those rates stabilize and as investments continue to occur and as operations and maintenance jobs come in and all of those expenditures associated with it, we see positive macroeconomic benefits for the broader community in Puerto Rico.
What investments and actions are needed to ensure a reliable energy system for Puerto Rico right away while enabling long-term objectives? What needs to be done to support a just energy transition for all Puerto Ricans?
>>Murali Baggu: Thank you very much, Peter. Let's see what is next. I would actually go back to Matt and Robin here. Matt, if you can shed some light on the implementation roadmap, I think, in terms of what are the actions and investments needed to ensure reliable energy system for Puerto Rico. And also, Robin, if you can really talk about how can we make this a just energy transition for all Puerto Ricans, that will be good.
PR100 Implementation Roadmap
>>Matthew Lave: Yeah, thanks, Murali. So we can do all this technical analysis. But it's also really important to take the technical analysis and turn it into the action items that come out of that technical analysis. That's what the PR100 implementation roadmap is. The roadmap is the last chapter of the main report. So when the main report is released, you can really dig into the details. This is a very high-level summary but this graphic shows the road. It's literally shown as a road, which is starting at the current state, which is the grid system as Pete was just describing, and ending at the target state, which is achieving Act 17 and also a more robust electric grid. Along the way, we've broken it into four different action periods. There are immediate actions that could be started today, to start having an impact and pointing in the right direction. There are near-term impacts that can be started soon, and then there are the mid- and the long-term impacts that are going to come a little bit further down the road as some of the challenges and opportunities of higher penetration of renewables begin to be achieved. The other thing to note is and it's really small in this graphic, is there are also recurring actions. Those are things like make sure that stakeholders are involved in these processes through the whole process. Those are also really important, it should be done throughout the process of engaging this roadmap and engaging the results of PR100. Just to give you a tiny little snippet of what's in the final report, on the next slide, we have a table that shows how we've actually broken up these action items.
Immediate actions will prepare for a robust electricity system with increasing renewables.
So, this is for the immediate actions. We have the action, we have the action area so that we know what kind of impacts is going to have on different topic areas. And then we have the stakeholders. And the stakeholders are the ones that are going to be responsible for enacting these actions. Through this organization, we hope to make it very accessible to the stakeholders in Puerto Rico and we intend for these to basically be guiding as Puerto Rico engages on this energy transition.
>>Murali Baggu: Robin, can you talk about the just transition.
Ensure broad and meaningful community participation in planning, decision-making, and implementation.
>>Robin Burton: Indeed. Yep, so one of the cornerstones of the PR100 Study was to really be thoughtful and intentional about integrating considerations of energy justice throughout the study. As far as the context in Puerto Rico, we know that utility customers pay more on average for electricity in Puerto Rico than most other places in the United States and that service is much less reliable. We also know that energy burden or the percent of income that households spend on energy is much higher in Puerto Rico than it is in other parts of the United States. So within that context, we really wanted to engage with stakeholders to make sure that we were hearing a variety of voices in the conversation about the study and to really be thoughtful about having the benefits and burdens of the way that we were thinking about the future energy system be equitably distributed. So as far as thinking about how to incorporate energy justice into the transition in the future, one important takeaway is to ensure broad and meaningful community participation in the planning, decision-making, and implementation of Puerto Rico's energy future. We also heard a lot about last-mile communities in Puerto Rico. Those communities that were last to be re-energized after past disruptions, and the importance of really prioritizing affordable, reliable, resilient electricity and high-quality jobs for the most vulnerable people in communities across Puerto Rico.
How to Access PR100 Final Results
>>Murali Baggu: With this, I'll certainly thank you all the panelists for providing a very quick preview of what's in the results. As I said, this is just scratching the surface. So please, as you can see on the screen there, the PR100.gov is where we have both Spanish and English versions of the summary report up and live right now. So feel free to look at it. For more information, we're anticipating to actually release the full report towards the end of March and it will be coming on the same website too with some of the interactive visualizations of different data sets. With that, thank you very much for this opportunity. I hope you got a glimpse of what the study is.
Implementation Discussion
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: All right. Thank you for that great panel that has given us a summary of the results. So what do we do with these results? We're going to have our next panel discussion precisely on that. How do we implement the results of the PR100 Study? And for that, I would like to invite up our panelists beginning with our moderator, Secretary Jennifer Granholm. I would also like to invite up Shay Bahramirad, the senior vice president of Transmission and Distribution Strategy and Sustainability at LUMA Energy. Carlos Alberto Velazquez Lopez, the program director for Puerto Rico of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. Maritere Padilla-Rodriguez, senior director of policy and advocacy for the Hispanic Federation in Puerto Rico. And Javier Rua-Jovet, chief policy officer for the Solar and Energy Storage Association of Puerto Rico, SESA. And Marcel Castro-Sitiriche, research professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Great. OK. So we need to understand what this means on the ground, what the practical implications are for this. And I'm going to start with Shay from LUMA. Consistent with LUMA's analysis, LUMA's own study, PR100 found, of course, that the system, the current grid is, no surprise, currently weak and fragile and in urgent need of repairs. And I'm just wondering if you can give us a thumbnail of what LUMA is doing to address those issues, especially the ones that have an immediate impact on reliability.
>>Shay Bahramirad: Secretary Granholm, I want to take a moment to thank you and your team for—and also FEMA, for funding this project and conducting this study, align with Puerto Rico 100 results as well as what we have heard from our customers about their concerns related to reliability. We have focused on making transformative changes to the way that the grid is designed and it operates. We have, as of today, initiated close to 400 projects that is about $11.3 billion. And in the next couple of months, we are going to initiate additional $6 billion that is going to be the foundation of integrating renewable energy to the system. Just to give you an idea of that portfolio and give you a few examples of how Puerto Rico 100 has helped us to make adjustment to those decisions, we have prioritized the 38 kV transformation. As you heard it from Marcelo, it's one of the areas that it requires upgrading the system and that's something that we have prioritized in our investments. Additionally, the large part of the outages in the system is because of the hazardous vegetation in the system. And because of the support of the Government of Puerto Rico, COR3, P3A, and FEMA, and a number of other agencies, we are going to kick off a three-year program to clean, clear those right of ways.
In three years, that is going to improve the reliability by 30% to 45%. You also heard from the PNNL team the importance of advanced control and automation and situational awareness. By June, we are going to have 3,500 automation devices in the system. To give you an idea, we have been installing those devices in the past couple of months. And up to date, we have saved 20 million in minutes of interruption for our customers. So we currently are seeing the impact on the reliability to the systems. Numerous 16 substations have already been critical components being replaced and a number of other transmission rebuild and distribution rebuilds very much aligned what you heard from the national labs. We are focused on getting the execution and doing it right and working with a large group of stakeholders, including the Government of Puerto Rico and FEMA and the national labs.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Thank you for that, Shay. And we're speaking at a time, of course, where you have had these terrible storms come through. And I know there's been a number of outages, maybe you can just quickly say a word about the immediate and how storms impact this fragile grid and when you expect that most of those repairs will be complete.
>>Shay Bahramirad: So yesterday, in the past two days, we had weather event. And we had close to 100,000 customers out. And the team has been working around the clock overnight and trying to restore the customers. These investments are going to help us the restore the customers not only by sending the crews out there, but having a situational awareness of where the outages happened and sending them where it needs to get fixed. In addition to that, clearing those hazardous vegetation that when the wind blows those trees are going to fall on the lines that they need to get fixed, that also creates as part of the restoration, it helps with the faster restoration. The energy management system, another one that is going to provide us the visibility to the system and ability to control it and send the command and control from the control center instead of going out there and driving the lines. So, these are all the parts and pieces of the investments that is going to help us not only integrate additional renewable in the system, but also making it resilient when these events happen.
>>Jennifer Granholm: That's great. Great example of how a smart grid will be able to assess damage, respond to damage, send energy where it can. It's a really important steps forward. Carlos, from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, I know that there's a lot of work being done on jobs and we heard about the construction jobs and that if we track the act of getting 40% of the grid renewable by the end of 2025, that is a big curve of jobs in addition to the operations and maintenance jobs. That's about 7,400 to 9,000 construction and installation job. So, what are you seeing on Puerto Rico that will help to recruit, prepare a trained workforce so we can satisfy the need?
>>Carlos Alberto Velazquez Lopez: OK. Well, thank you very much for the opportunity, Secretary, to address the issue of workforce. It's interesting that in the context of we're talking about three different pathways to get Puerto Rico towards 100% decarbonization, I think there's great consensus there's only one pathway when we talk about the actual development of the workforce to get there. And when I say that, what I mean is that I think there's consensus that the workforce has to be creating meaningful and rewarding opportunities for thousands of Puerto Ricans. Not just for jobs but actually career opportunities and a career pathway for good jobs. What Puerto Rico is doing right, Puerto Rico has a great ecosystem of training at the universities. We put out top-notch engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, environmental engineers. The people that we need for that transition. On a more of a technical level, we have 12 to 15 technical schools and community and community colleges working with electricians, electrician apprenticeship type of jobs and more on the trade. More recently, I would say the nonprofit is really participating in putting together a strong training ecosystem and their contribution to the whole training for the nonprofit is really inclusion. They're coming in for niche training, they're coming in to look at the workforce and say there are underrepresented sectors that should participate in that transition towards 100% decarbonization so they're doing a great job there. And I would add obviously, our professional associations of engineers and surveyors, master electricians, we're just a center of quality and excellence. So that's a strong part of our training ecosystem, but there are gaps and I think the gaps is that Puerto Rico has needs, a sustained dialogue I would call it to make sure that the workforce is right-sized and that the workforce is right skilled. And at that table of conversation and dialogue, academia has to be the solar companies, the renewable energy companies has to be labor representation, people who speak for the employers. There has to be nonprofits, et cetera. So I think that's important.
And I would add that perhaps in the messaging, we need to be talking about career pathways and career opportunities as opposed to jobs so that we make it sustained so that we make it long-term.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Yeah, I agree 100%. LUMA, are you guys still hiring?
>>Shay Bahramirad: Yes, we are. We have 270 graduates from six universities in Puerto Rico. And last summer, we had 110 interns. This summer, we are targeting 180 interns from six universities. In addition to that, we have over 200 apprentices in our line work that—
>>Jennifer Granholm: Earn while you learn, right?
>>Shay Bahramirad: Exactly. They get paid while they learn and there's a path to your point about the career path and the progression to get there.
>>Jennifer Granholm: That's great. OK. Let me jump over to—is it Maritere? All right. Maritere from the Hispanic Federation. There's been a lot of talk about the rooftop solar and sometimes it's rooftop versus utility-scale solar. I'm just wondering if you can say a word about the role that you see for utility-scale solar or utility strategies in this 100% renewable goal.
>>Maritere Padilla-Rodriguez: Well, thank you for your question and for the opportunity to be part of this great panel. To identify a fair balance between utility-scale and rooftop solar, we need to remember the reason why Puerto Rico started this energy transition. And it's mainly to avoid what happened after Hurricane Maria when we lost more than 3,000 lives during the longest blackout in U.S. history. So, this is not only about transitioning to clean renewable energy, this is also about energy justice, about resiliency, and about saving lives. So when we compare that the utility-scale versus rooftop solars, utility scales does provide clean renewable energy and help us mitigate climate change impacts, but rooftop solar, it has been clearly established in previous studies and actually expressly recognized in the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan, is the best technology to maximize resiliency and the opportunity of saving lives.
So even though the economic analysis of the PR100 Study concludes that utility-scale projects are more cost-effective than rooftop solar, we have to acknowledge that that cost-benefit analysis didn't integrate the cost of the social and environmental impacts of utility scale. Neither the social burden and a metrics that the Sandia Lab developed. And honestly, I don't know if we can actually put a price or a cost to the opportunity of saving lives with rooftop solar. So I think that decision makers should prioritize rooftop solar's resiliency in saving lives and they cannot do it alone. As Robin explained before, this has to come with a meaningful public participation process where communities can decide their energy future. And also, decision makers have the responsibility to ensure fair access to the benefit of rooftop solar. And why? Now what we're seeing is that only the people that have the money to buy rooftop solar can access the resiliency and affordability benefits. So that needs to change yesterday. From the $20 billion federal funding that we have, only less than $2.5 billion are truly allocated to provide that fair access. We need to change that. So, after we prioritize resiliency and saving lives, if we still need to integrate utility-scale renewable energy projects to reach our 40% goal by 2025, we have to do it in a sustainable way. And as we heard before, a key finding of the PR100 Study is that we have no need to impact agricultural land, no need to sacrifice Puerto Rico's goal for food security to achieve a 100% renewable energy transition. I know I'm sure we can achieve energy justice. And I hope that decision makers will have the political will to ensure that.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Great. Thank you for that. And next to you is somebody who heads an association that is doing all this deployment of rooftop solar. And I'm wondering, Javier—he's the head of SESA, the Solar and Energy Storage—
>>Javier Rua-Jovet: PJ is the head.
>>Jennifer Granholm: What? Oh, sorry. Sorry. I get it. I get it. You help. How's that? But one of the ways to ensure that rooftop solar is effective and we are maximizing the impact, is to allow for homeowners for batteries to charge, discharge, to have a two-way conversation with the grid, for example. And I'm wondering, batteries have got to be a part of this obviously. What solutions do you see as part of this study that we should be moving on?
>>Javier Rua-Jovet: Thank you, Secretary. And to answer that question, I'm going to set the stage with some data points, which are a great story that's happening. And it's a story that's happening because of the good things that are happening in the transition like LUMA, a professional, well-informed entity, the private sector, a good regulator. So Puerto Rico now has the first operating, although small, virtual power plant in Latin America and the Caribbean.
So I'm going to say that again. Puerto Rico has launched the Battery Emergency Demand Response program. It's a pilot program, but it's the first VPP in Latin America and the Caribbean. It's just a proof of concept and to the question, uptake is slow right now. And I'll go to that. But it's a proof of concept of the fact that Puerto Rico already has the largest untapped virtual power plant in the world. Puerto Rico has over 100,000 residential sited batteries. I think it's way more than that but let's say 100,000. That's 1.6 gigawatt-hours of electricity that grows organically by market forces and good policy by about 80 megawatt-hours a month, 5,000 batteries a month.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Five thousand is what it now is?
>>Javier Rua-Jovet: Four-thousand, five-hundred systems a month. In Puerto Rico, attachment rate is 100% so it's 1.2 batteries per system. Some people have one, some people have three. But it's 80 megawatt-hours a month so it grows. It's constantly growing. So we're starting with the Battery Emergency Demand Response Program, to your question, yes, we have to figure out ways to make uptake faster. I think one of the challenges is that Puerto Ricans, naturally, we value our resiliency a lot because that's why we install batteries because we want to save our lives. We have to deal with that I think there's an education element. I think there is what is the right price point element for the incentivization. I think we have to figure out business models by which it's at the point of sale, people have maybe an extra battery dedicated to that. But the fact is that this is happening, it can be put on steroids by continued good policy that's happening. And I really think it's an example of the good things that are happening. LUMA, the regulator, private industry collaboration, and it's a great story. So maybe price points can be better for people to say, OK, go into my battery or maybe it's another model. But the resources there and it grows organically and the story of storage at all scales, including battery sited—residential sited batteries is what's going to save the grid. It's going to deal with hosting capacity concerns at the distribution level, Marcelo mentioned it. So battery saves us all. So that's part of the answer.
>>Jennifer Granholm: It is part of the answer. And as we think about our Programa Accesso Solar, all of those going to low-income and last-mile communities, et cetera, have to have battery storage attached. It's just such a huge important part of resilience. So all incomes, I think it's really important for the entire system. It's really important. So, Marcel, you have been studying energy systems for decades. Obviously, you're at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez. I am wondering if you can describe a bit about your thinking about other ways to address the solar need. Doesn't have to be utility scale, it doesn't have to be exactly rooftop house by house. Say a little bit about what you've been working on.
>>Marcel Castro-Sitiriche: It is great to go after Maritere and Javier because I'm going to build up on that. Beside rooftop solar, which is the technology that saves lives, the next thing we have to do, I'll say two things. One is we need to go a little bit further down Maritere, I'll say that we need to stop the building of solar farms. And also, I'm going to talk about clean energy that we need. Now the reason for that is we need to focus on what I call the bottom-up grid. So we start at the bottom, which is rooftop solar but not only that, it's also the people. We need to invest in the people and we need to invest starting, for example, what the people suffers here. Robert García Cooper did a study as part of the PR100 as a graduate student of how much it costs one hour of outage to the people. And that's something that is about to be published. And it was part of the results considering PR100 Study. Also, we need organizations to invest in the people. For example, I'm in the board of Barrio Electrico and that's one of many organizations that were directly with the people, bottom up, the energy governance at community level and then going up. So, once we have that, we need to invest much more on that side. The technology, I'm not going to say that is easier, but I'll say this is harder. But we have that as a foundation then we look at different technologies, the virtual power plants, microgrids, nanogrids even. Let's say 10 houses in a small grid. And vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, peer-to-peer, all these that the smart grid is going to enable and that I'm sure a lot of people want this together. So, if we have that strong foundation from the bottom up, then we can do it. So, this is very, very important and if we build too much solar farms now, then later it's not going to be able to use—we're not going to use the rooftop that are available in the future. For example, right now, the most aggressive scenario only taps into the 40% of the rooftop available potentially. If we use 78%, we could use only rooftop to generate 100% of the power needed. With 77% of the rooftops available now. So we need to go even further. And then I think as Maritere said, if there is need for more, like when we charge solar cars, I mean, electric cars, we might need a farms to cover that. And the last point about clean energy, we need clean energy but like two years ago, I mentioned this that we need clean energy but not only clean from emissions, we need energy that is clean from corruption. Clean from imperialism. Clean from colonialism. Clean from oppression. And right now, for example, the debt, the way it's been negotiated by unimposed fiscal control board, that is something that is not giving us clean energy for the future. And the rates that could go high because of that debt is another imposition that could prevent people from saving their lives through life-saving technology. And so that is something that could affect our mental health that I was also studying in a contribution from the university. And integrated this is what I see that are the next steps that are needed to go in that direction. And we need to continue the dialogue and use scientific data based to continue the conversation.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Appreciate that and your perspective on it. Thank you, Marcel. It's so interesting the goal of getting as much rooftop solar as we possibly can, gets more difficult when we are crunched with this have to have it on 40% by 2025, because it takes longer to put on individual rooftop solar. So those competing values are part of what makes this so difficult. And we're all striving toward a win-win on how do we meet the goals and provide resilience on an individual level. Appreciate your remarks on it. One last question for Shay and then I'm going to do a lightning round with you all and then that will be it. Shay, can you say a word about the IRP, the Integrated Resource Plan process, and whether LUMA will take into account PR100 as it submits its IRP.
>>Shay Bahramirad: The Integrated Resource Plan gets submitted, filed every three years. That looks into different options of generation resources that provides reliable, clean, resilient and affordable energy for Puerto Rico. And as part of that process, different types of technologies, different types of scenarios gets studied in addition to looking into customer's solar and storage, how it gets incorporated to that mix. And a very important part of that process is stakeholder engagement. To get input from government agencies, universities, private companies, private citizens, and consumer advocates and a long list of others. So far, we have had—we have hosted 21 workshops in eight municipalities in Puerto Rico and we have two more coming. We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from stakeholders as well as Energy Bureau.
I want to make sure it's clear that this is not really LUMA's vision or a plan, it's a collaborative effort to look into different options how to move forward. Now, in terms of Puerto Rico 100, it's been a great input to look into different types of technology, available technology, what's in the roadmap, the costs associated with that. And how the grid needs to evolve in order to accommodate the cleaner solution. We are committed to public policy of Puerto Rico and we look forward to continue working with different stakeholders to develop and finish this Integrated Resource Plan.
>>Jennifer Granholm: So PR100 will figure into the plan that you submit. I just want to make sure because a lot of people have worked on this over a long period of time. We want to make sure that it's not just going to sit on the shelf.
>>Shay Bahramirad: No, it won't. It gets incorporated into Integrated Resource Plan. It also gets incorporated into the investment plan that LUMA is making in the grid.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Great. That's what I wanted to hear. OK. Last question for the group. Just quickly, two words that give you hope about Puerto Rico's future—the grid. The Puerto Rican grid future. Two words.
>>Shay Bahramirad: Progress and talent.
>>Carlos Alberto Velazquez Lopez: More inclusiveness and encourage.
>>Maritere Padilla-Rodriguez: Saving lives.
>>Javier Rua-Jovet: Storage and storage.
>>Marcel Castro-Sitiriche: Decentralized power.
>>Jennifer Granholm: All right. Is it back to you? OK. I'm going to pass it back to Charlotte. Thank you to this incredible group. Really interesting and wonderful and rich perspectives. Thank you so much.
Questions and Answers
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: So, we have now reached our Q&A. We asked when folks registered for this event to submit any questions you might have and those questions we got dozens and dozens of questions. And we looked for some of those commonalities and a few key questions were selected or some of those ones that we saw repeated were selected. And I am going to invite up to answer those questions, Nate, Marcelo, and Matt. If you can return to the stage. And I was sent the questions and I can't read such small letters so I've put them here on my phone.
>>Audience Member: What they said when they were speaking?
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Let me look to my lead here and ask. I think on it for a time, we most likely won't be able to. However, we do have an event after this that I'm going to talk about in a moment where most of us will be going and everyone here is invited to so that we can continue that conversation and ask some of those questions. Now, these are some long questions that they've put together for you. So you got to listen really carefully here. OK the first question says, we received questions about the comparison between different scales of renewable energy deployment, and land use, such as the comparison for rooftop PV, utility scale, solar farms using LCOE. How important is the deployment of utility-scale renewables for Puerto Rico's goals? And what is the final recommendation to minimize the use of agriculture land? What do the results tell us about these topics? Looking at you, Nate.
>>Nate Blair: Is that for me?
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: I believe so.
>>Nate Blair: How many hours do I have? She's going to flip up that card—
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: We have about 15 minutes here. So let's start with five. You got five minutes. That was a complex question.
>>Nate Blair: That was a complex question and a lot in there. And it's probably at least three chapters in about 80 pages of content in the final report. So keep refreshing your browser until that goes live. But I think—let me tack these in a couple different pieces. One is on the cost question. We did our best to take cost projections into the future, which we have for the mainland and those are informed by a whole lot of different analyzes and adjust those for Puerto Rico. So we use the cost numbers in tranche one, which are roughly double the mainland costs and we use those for the utility-scale costs that we deployed. The good news is, that those costs continue to decline into the future for utility-scale PV and utility-scale wind and storage rather significantly. And so purchases now are more expensive than purchases in the future. For the distributed PV and storage, we use costs that are aligned with the Vivienda program that I think many of you are familiar with and that were published last winter. So all of these costs are dynamic and I wrote and got a lot of feedback on. So a lot of authors but we wrote a chapter on uncertainty in the final report, which I think is also worth looking at because there is a very dynamic set of costs in the market here. And so all of our cost assumptions and so forth are uncertain particularly as we then use our crystal ball into the future. So, I think land availability, those of us that have been involved with the Advisory Group, we have found that there's about 18 gigawatts of utility-scale PV resource available on the island without using any agricultural land. Robin showed earlier this afternoon the really wonderful maps, which will all be on the data platform eventually too. The really wonderful maps that show once you've excluded all of the protected areas and all of the urban areas and all the agricultural land, that's where you get down to this lower number of 18 gigawatts and I think 44 gigawatts. I'm terrible. For a scientist, I'm terrible at keeping numbers in my head. Forty-four gigawatts when you include agricultural land. And when you include agricultural land you get a few spots in Puerto Rico that are perhaps a little bit cheaper. So on average, the cost goes down a little bit when you include agricultural land versus excluding it completely. But it's not as different as you would see on the mainland where you've got places that are quite a bit less sunny than other places. So there is a range across the island as we've examined with our modeling. How close did I get to all of those topics?
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: There were a couple in there but I think you hit most of them.
>>Nate Blair: OK.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: I'm going to go to the next one, which is also a twofer. So we'll see who wants to answer that one. How can Puerto Rico overcome the challenges of transitioning to 100% renewable power and how does the grid that LUMA is fixing with FEMA funds work with the proposed renewable energy models? I think that one's for you, Marcelo.
>>Marcelo Elizondo: Yes, certainly. Thank you for the question. I think in the report, we have several aspects of reliability that needs to be taken into account when planning a 100% renewables. Those are across three chapters mainly in our report. One of them analyzes if you have enough resources when they are needed and considering the timing and the sequencing of, for example, it is sunny during the day only, that's when you have the solar power. Then you will need energy storage to put the power in the evening. So, one of them and then answer to that question if are there enough resources? Are there enough transmission available? Then the other part analysis, the stability, what happened when there are certain contingencies in the system? Is the system prepared? Is it going to keep together? And are there enough controls in the system?
Then the other chapter looks at the distribution system as well and look at what happened when the reverse power flow is flowing across the distribution wires. And what are the challenges in operating there? And in addition to that, is studying the resilience of the system. What happened when the hurricanes will come and how the grid is going to be strong enough to withstand? And if the grid breaks, is going to recover in an acceptable way? And I think all of those types of analysis need to be taken into account. As FEMA invest in recovering the grid and together with transitioning to 100% renewables, so it is very important to continue evaluating those, the system and the evolution of the system as we go. So, we did this analysis in PR100 but we are not done. We need to continue doing this. All of stakeholders, the utility operators, regulators need to continue working on this as the transition happens.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Gracia, Marcelo. And then our last question is, can demand response programs be expanded to include more DER, distributed energy resources, through PR100?
>>Matthew Lave: So, Javier really set this up really well. So this demand response program exists and today, its main focus is on time periods when there's a lot of load, a lot of demand on the grid. And the concept is to reduce that demand probably using batteries or whatever you can do to reduce that demand. There's going to be another challenge as I was talking about earlier, where as we get more and more renewables in the grid specifically more and more solar and often wind, that are really going to peak—well, especially solar is really going to peak during the day, wind is also variable, the challenge is going to be that you could have an imbalance between generation and consumption. That's that mid-day sort of U-shaped peak that I was talking about.
And so I think a real—so in addition to just increasing the number of customers that are involved in these demand response programs, I think there's a real opportunity to look at that mid-day peak and really call it more of a balancing of generation and consumption rather than just a demand response. So I think that's a really great opportunity. And I'm also going to mention that building on things that Javier, Marcelo and Marcel and others have been saying, there's a real opportunity with renewables to spread them out, to distribute them. We're not talking centralized really massive power plants necessarily. And so an opportunity there is even going beyond demand response or beyond balancing—well, into balancing generation and load locally. And so things like microgrids are really great opportunities to say we can control—well, we can control the batteries. So, we can charge during the day, we can discharge at night, and that can be a really good opportunity to actually serve the load as needed while utilizing this renewable generation that is variable.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you. So we're going to have to hold off on questions because of time. We are at our past 5 o'clock.
>>Audience Member: My question has to do with what Matthew said and what the governor said, and I think it will be illustrative of the frustrations that's almost half regarding how things are being done.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Could we hold it until we get to the end of the agenda? And then if looking at the time, see if we can come back to it? We're finished with this formal Q&A, so we want to be able to get through the end of the agenda and then if we can, we can come back.
And as I mentioned earlier, we are going to have an event where everyone will be—everyone here is invited to join and we can continue to deepen some of those conversations that you have, but I do want to get us to the next point in our agenda, which is to, one, thank our panelists but invite back up for the official closing remarks, Secretary Granholm. And so thank you to our panelists.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Thanks you guys. I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everybody who has participated in giving us their feedback across the island and certainly the Advisory Group. Thank you for the candor with which people have been expressing themselves. I know that there's a lot of issues that we still have to work through. The system is not perfect. We're a long way from that. But know that we have collectively, incredibly, fierce goodwill to getting it right or as right as it can be when a system is devised by humans. We want to be able to meet this goal of 100%. We want to be able to meet the goal of 40% by the end of 2025. That is going to be really hard and it's going to require a lot of work together. We want to make sure that we do this without impacting negatively ratepayers who are already paying through the roof. So how do we devised a system that is able to balance all of these things? This is why this process has begun this conversation. A number of stakeholders in this room are working their tails off to make this happen. If we have 110,000 households with storage now and we've got 1.2 million households on the island, we've got a lot of work to do. But I am incredibly hopeful and I'm incredibly grateful and know that we are partners in making this big, hairy, audacious goal happen. Thank you all so much.
Contact Us
[Text on screen: Access PR100 Final Report and other resources at www.PR100.gov. Sign up for bilingual updates at DOE Grid Deployment Office (govdelivery.com). For questions on our efforts in Puerto Rico, contact prprojects@nrel.gov.]
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: OK. So before we officially end, I do want to share, as already mentioned, all of this information is available publicly and online. We have information on where and how you can follow up with questions that you may have or that may have come out of today's presentation. We also I think if we can move to the next slide, all of the past events are also there, progress reports, and other information that will help you see what the process was to achieve the end here.
[Text on screen: Progress Reports: PR100 One-Year Progress Summary; PR100 Six-Month Progress Update. Past Events: PR100 Webinar One-Year Progress Update (January 23, 2023); PR100 Webinar 6-month Progress Update (July 21, 2022); PR100 Webinar Public Launch (February 16, 2022). Webpages: PR100: www.PR100.gov; DOE: Puerto Rico Grid Recovery and Modernization; NREL: Multilab Energy Planning Support for Puerto Rico.]
And lastly, for those in the room, I would like to invite you to take a very short walk across the street over to Medalla Arena for a social hour that SESA has volunteered to host for us.
So please join us there. As I mentioned, folks from here will be going there and can continue answering your questions. And for those who have remained with us online, thank you so much. And we hope that this is a start, not an end. So we hope to continue with you.
[End of event]
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