Author: paul@viequesverde.biz

MEETING WITH ELECTRICAL STAKEHOLDERS

Hector Olivieri, Director of OMME, Vieques has procured for us a seat at the table in the power restoration arena.  This is huge! When Director Olivieri realized that schemes for running new power lines through F&W were progressing without the input of the citizens and professionals on Vieques, he decided to invite the key figures from FEMA, US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), Department of Energy, PREPA, and others, including local experts, to meet and discuss the situation, the goals, and the options.

Among the many professionals in attendance were:

• Thomas Holden, Director, FEMA
• John Lloyd, Director of Power Restoration for PR, USACE
• Assha Tribble, PhD, FEMA
• Carlos D. Torres, EEI
• Jeff Miller, DOE
• Mike Barandiaran, USFWS

As well as many more from these same organizations and representatives from AAA, PREPA, USCG, PRANG, Fluor, Tourism, VCHT, Vieques Love, and others.

The morning began with a field trip to Punta Arena with an additional stop at the substation across from the Collectoria, followed by a meeting in the multiplex.  The following highlights what was learned:

1. According to Conde, Director of AAA for Vieques, the old solar panels at Arcadia (water pump station on the way to Punta Arenas) never were in service. Since Tesla installed their panels and battery systems (Power Walls), the old panels were integrated into the microgrid and are working.
2. There are two 3.5MW diesel generators at Bastimento that we use for backup power. We are currently using electricity at the rate of about 1.6MW for the portion of the island with service.  Our historical peak power requirements have been about 6MW.  Backup generators, as opposed to prime generators, are designed to run for short periods of time and then rested.  They are often used on a cycle of 12 hours on and then 12 hours off.  As it turns out, our backup generators are robust and have the capability to run full time.  They require routine maintenance every 500 hours.  So, every three weeks each generator must be shut off for up to 8 hours and serviced. We have all been pleasantly surprised at the excellent performance of the crew and generator that together have provided excellent power for the last month.
3. The status of our generators is: one is working fine, and the other is off due to ambiguous readings in the monitoring equipment.  We have two problems that affect the continued operation of these generators:
   • Getting parts for routine maintenance through the supply chain at the PREPA bureaucracy is harder than getting permits to build an airport in the Plaza; and
   • The generators come from a French company and getting authorization to fly in an appropriate engineer to help diagnose the problem is even harder than getting parts.
4. The upper staffs of both USACE and FEMA say they are now fully aware of the problem and will work it out. Timing remains an unknown.
5. The good news is that Fluor/Pike are making rapid progress, and it is expected that many more areas will be coming online soon. The dilemma we are facing is that we may have difficulty powering the whole island if the second generator is not brought online.
6. The power from Naguabo arrives at Punta Arenas in two cables, one of which was installed decades ago and another larger one in the 90’s. Both are said to be at the end of their life cycles.  The transmission lines from Punta Arenas have been routed through the lagoon area well south of the Fish and Wildlife road to the beaches.  Approximately 45 poles are down along that route.  There are many options for restoration with each having its own advantages, disadvantages, and costs which must be thoroughly vetted:
   • Restore the existing system using the same route with replacement wooden poles. This would require road building within the refuge to erect and service the system. The grid would remain vulnerable to similar events.
   • Same as “a” but with concrete poles which would be more durable and handle longer cable spans.
   • Reroute the system to parallel the existing beach road. The water line for the island is already buried on the north side of the road.
   • Splice new undersea cables into the arriving cables at Punta Arenas and run these off shore to an access point very close to Mosquito Pier and connect to the grid there. The disruption to the refuge would be eliminated, maintenance would be minimized, and storm damage would no longer be an issue.  The problem with this is that it is known that the existing cables are near the end of their lives, so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to invest $3M to $5M connecting to obsolete infrastructure. Past experience with undersea cables indicates a cost of between $1M to $1.5M per mile.
   • Run new undersea cables from Ceiba to the Mosquito Pier area. This is the preferred long term solution by all, but the costs may exceed FEMA’s allocation when the analysis is completed.
7. There are variations on the above schemes that will also be studied. The timing for each of these fixes is quite different, and that factor will also be taken into account.  The immediate goal is to get the power on everywhere as fast as possible.  The power generation we have previously received from Naguabo is not currently available due to that plant supplying 100% of its output to the main island grid.  It is not clear when it will be able to supply Vieques and Culebra.  The fastest any of the solutions for distributing main island power here appears to exceed 2 months. The longer term solution, if accepted, could be double or triple.
8. What I would like to see, based on the information presented is:
   • New cables run from Ceiba to near mosquito Pier.
   • A 6MW generator (offered by FEMA) added to the two 3.5MW plants to give us the reliable capability to run 24/7 until power is 100% restored from the main island. After the situation becomes normal, we could return the new generator to FEMA.

The meeting was an enormous step in the right direction.  It brought the most experienced and professional people together to sit down a thoroughly present and discuss the goals and potential solutions.  Thanks to Director Olivieri and all of those who took the time and made the effort to help Vieques recover and flourish.

It’s December 3rd, and I’m sorry to report that improvements to our situation have netted out to be baby steps since my last post a month ago. Many forward, many back! “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” is the saying, yet we can’t seem to get the government to move: they are blocking the road.

My glass is typically half full, and I always try to look at the bright side and be as positive as possible; but, we must acknowledge the reality: the PR and Municipal governments are criminally dysfunctional and don’t care about us or our future. Sure there are excuses, but they all point to the fact that we are suffering today because they were incompetent yesterday. And, this is a continuous cycle of neglect with no end in sight, so our tomorrows will be more of the same. That being said, we’ve got to get over it. No matter how logical and obvious our critiques and complaints, our elected officials (dumb as posts, sadistic, self-serving, or all of the above) are going to only do what they want, and we know that it won’t be in our best interests!

I began listing the improvements in our situation to identify where we are and what we can do to remove the road blocks that are unnecessarily inhibiting progress, but I became too depressed to continue and don’t want to rehash the obvious. So, I found one area for which the time is ripe to exert some major effort: energy independence.

While nobody is surprised to discover that our electrical infrastructure was fragile and deteriorated before Maria; and while none of us ever felt that the power company was operating in our best interests; and given that everyone knew that the corruption at the top was responsible for the insanely high cost of electricity; we should be pleased to realize that now is the time to force changes. Education and awareness of the citizens are the keys to social change, and we are now informed.

We see behind the curtain. We have experienced the personal losses and the economic disaster that accompanies the non-temporary interruption of electricity. Just as the ATM has choked economic development in Vieques for over a decade, PREPA has single handedly destroyed any hope of prosperity in Puerto Rico for the next decade. PREPA has set us back years at a critical juncture of our debt crisis. But we have learned some things and understand that there are alternatives for Vieques.

Because we are isolated and dangle from an electrical cable coming from Naguabo, we are not integrated with, but rather plugged into, the grid at a single point. It is no big deal technically to unplug. In fact, we are currently “unplugged”. We can independently power our island in a variety of ways. The max capacity of our now defunct system was about 10MW, and we typically used under 7MW. Culebra was linked to the main island through Vieques like a daisy chain via a continuing underwater cable system. An oil based backup facility was built in Vieques over a decade ago comprised of two 6MW generators designed to run 12 hours on and 12 hours off in an alternating rotation. Lack of maintenance has very possibly rendered irreparable damage to the equipment – we will see soon.

Historically, Vieques has been blessed with significant sunlight and strong winds. Research suggests that the best winds and the most sunlight are available on the east end of the island but other areas are certainly viable. Studies show that we have “good” conditions as rated by both wind and solar experts. We are not rated “excellent” due to the seasonal variations of winds and clear skies. Proposals for both wind and solar should be solicited and evaluated. The cost of both collection and storage has been dropping dramatically every year to the point that they are excellent, cost effective alternatives to our antiquated petroleum based service.

Centralization or Decentralization

Solar and wind technology can be utilized in both centralized and decentralized installations. The advantages of decentralization include: reduction or elimination of distribution lines, equipment, and costs, as well as lessened vulnerability to storm damage. The advantages of centralization are greater efficiency and a lower original cost for the plants.

A large scale array can be placed in a single area and sized to supply the whole island. Alternatively, to reduce distribution costs, multiple (smaller) dispersed arrays could be located in or near various neighborhoods and commercial areas. Government land should be surveyed to find optimal locations for placement of the array(s) to tie into the existing infrastructure. Although much of our distribution system has been damaged by hurricanes, some may be usable, and further development worked around the existing systems. New distribution should be below ground, and existing elevated components should be buried as soon as practical.

Lithium-ion batteries have evolved dramatically, based in no small part on the efforts of Tesla and Solar City. Battery storage is already cost effective in many market areas and will be in PR when the monopoly-protecting obstacles placed by the power company and government officials are removed. Battery packs are scalable from single family home sized units to island-wide power banks.

To begin with, privately owned solar backup systems can be efficiently installed immediately on the flat roofs of most existing houses. These are light weight panels with or without batteries. They are connected to the house circuit breaker panel with a transfer switch which selects either the grid or the solar source. Power would pass through an inverter to convert the DC current to AC. A power conditioner would provide a constant, clean voltage for the devices connected within the house. Batteries could permit continuation of the supply of electricity while the sun is unavailable. The system is scalable: one could have just a couple of panels to run a refrigerator, electronics, a fan, etc., or an extensive system could be installed to cover everything in the house during sunshine and a couple of days of clouds. More complex systems integrated into our new grid for net metering are also possible.

The manufacturing costs of both panels and batteries have been decreasing by roughly 20% year after year. We cannot afford to invest in the antiquated technology and business model of the AEE power company. [“Clean Disruption” Tony Seba]

There are many possible solutions to our problem, but nothing happens overnight. We could phase a solution for energy independence. As an example, we could establish an interim fix that would consist of four steps in either of two ways:

• Implement a short term (maybe 1 to 2 year) operation of our backup generators as the primary source of power to our grid – if the generators are repairable at reasonable cost;
• Begin work on a centralized solar system to become the primary power source for Vieques quickly;
• Simultaneously encourage the installation of private decentralized solar systems on houses and other buildings; and
• Retire the generators to a backup status.
Or
• Implement a potentially longer term (maybe up to10 years) operation of LNG (liquid natural gas) generators as the primary source of power to our grid;
• Begin work on a centralized solar system to become the primary power source for Vieques at a moderate pace governed by funding;
• Simultaneously encourage the installation of private decentralized solar systems on houses and other buildings; and
• Retire the generators to a backup status.

Government land south of Mosquito Pier would allow easy grid access for the solar arrays (and/or wind generators) and minimize transportation for the 10,000 gallon tanks for a new LNG plant. The cost of electricity with LNG and/or solar will be far less than with diesel.

Finance

Traditional financing for utility projects is through bonds which are structured to ensure repayment through customer fees for service. Because PR has broken the mold and tainted this long standing practice, it is unlikely that any entity would be interested. Another development method gaining popularity is that of a PPA, or a Purchase Power Agreement. This long term arrangement is based on a contract with the provider to build and operate a power plant (and optionally the distribution network) and bill customers directly for their power. The method of pricing the power can be a bulk figure per month for a specified minimum quantity or simply a fixed charge per KWH. Ownership of the infrastructure can be private and/or municipal. This is a flexible relationship that is molded to fit both parties.

It may be that grants and other semi-philanthropic agreements could be secured for the sustainable power components. In that case, the initial phase of diesel or LNG generator dependence can provide us the time to apply for and implement alternative energy plant(s). As the sustainable operation grows, the traditional generators would become supplemental or backups. Initial savings in our electrical rates could also be applied to help finance the solar development if we agreed to delay the price drop. Ultimately, the rates would fall significantly.

PREPA Agreement

It is totally unclear how independence from PREPA would be accomplished, but there are several points to consider:
• PREPA is bankrupt, and cannot sell assets without court approval;
• The Junta, or Fiscal Control Board, will want to weigh in on any plan to privatize;
• The Central Government will attempt to flex its muscles as well;
• The union, UTIER, will no doubt fight this in court and through the illegal strong-armed tactics for which it is known; and
• A privatization of Vieques power will ultimately save PREPA money.

Assets purchased from PREPA should be negotiated based upon the book value of the infrastructure. While the existing distribution systems are old, new equipment has been added at a very slow pace. The majority of system extensions, however, have been paid for by the customer, and most of the emergency repairs have been provided by outside sources, NOT the utility company. A strong case can be made that the distribution systems have long since been paid for and represent zero book value. According to Caribbean Business, (Agustin Criollo Oquero & Rosario Fajardo, September 7, 2017):

Prepa Executive Director Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez recently said the powerlines carrying electricity in the public corporation’s system are in such a deteriorated state that a strong storm could leave the island without power for weeks.

[anonymous employee] ….said that much of Prepa’s equipment dates back to the 1950’s – and the more “modern” equipment that is still functional dates from the 1990’s….

Summary

There has never been a better time, and there may never be again. We must act now to free ourselves from the parasitic clenches of PREPA. We need to simultaneously attract vendors to secure legitimate proposals that we can use to negotiate our energy independence, and educate our citizens on the value of small scale solar for their homes – while aiding the growth of local expertise to provide sales and service. This is how we take control of our energy infrastructure and reinforce our desired image as a sustainable island community. This is hugely important. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.