Puerto Rico, na de orkanen Irma en Maria in de steek gelaten door de VS, gaat energievoorziening verduurzamen

Puerto Rico werd vorig jaar door 2 orkanen getroffen, Irma en Maria, deze hebben het eiland in diepe ellende gestort. Niet alleen gigantische materiële schade, maar ook zaken als de elektriciteitsvoorziening werden vernield...... De Trump administratie heeft de situatie op Puerto Rico keer op keer gebagatelliseerd en Trump gaf een hem bevriend bedrijf de opdracht om de energievoorziening op het eiland weer op gang te brengen, echter dit bedrijf had daar bij lange na de capaciteit niet voor.....

Er zijn veel vergelijkingen met Sint Maarten, onderdeel van 'ons koninkrijk', ook daar hield orkaan Irma stevig huis en 90% van de huizen werd vernield*. Nederland misbruikte de enorme ellende voor de bewoners om het bestuur van dit eiland te chanteren (hoofdverantwoordelijke PvdA ploert Plasterk): het democratisch gekozen bestuur moest opstappen en het kleine eiland met amper middelen werd verplicht meer te doen aan grensbewaking, dit terwijl er al jaren een peperdure marine missie gaande is rond de Antillen waar de Nederlandse marine de VS marine assisteert in de zinloze jacht van de VS op drugs uit Zuid-Amerika.......

Terug naar Puerto Rico, waar men nu de blik heeft gevestigd op duurzame energie, waarbij de firma van Elon Musk, Tesla de eilandbewoners helpt met batterijen voor de opslag van zonne- en windenergie. Voor korte duur was Puerto Rico zelfs de VS staat, waarbij het grootste gebied werd voorzien van duurzame energie. 

Uiteraard is de Trump administratie niet blij met het besluit van Puerto Rico om duurzaam te gaan, immers deze administratie zet in op zoveel mogelijk fossiel brandstofverbruik....... Toch leuk dat deze administratie dit zelf in de hand heeft gewerkt, al blijft het een godvergeten schandaal dat men deze elandbewoners zo lang heeft laten zitten, zoals het voor ons een schande is, dat Nederland na 8 maanden eindelijk wat geld heeft overgemaakt voor de wederopbouw van Sint Maarten, al wordt dit geld dan wel beheert door de neokoloniale Wereldbank....... (het bestuur moest weg van Plasterk, daar het niet vertrouwd was geld aan dit bestuur over te maken, blijkbaar vertrouwt men nu ook het nieuwe bestuur niet......)

Lees het volgende artikel van Harvey Wasserman over de gevolgen van 2 vernietigende orkanen op- en de verduurzaming van Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico Gets to Solartopia

Puerto Rico Goes Back Door to Solartopia and the Corporate Media Blacks It Out

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

Puerto Rico has made history by becoming — briefly — the largest US territory or state to be powered almost entirely by renewable energy.

The corporate media has done all it can to black the story out.

The rising grassroots movement to totally rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric supply system with renewable energy and locally owned micro-grids poses a serious threat to the centralized, fossil-based corporate elite.

But two hurricanes and two human-error blackouts have opened the door to systemic change.
Here’s how:

Last September, Hurricane Irma blew through the Caribbean, passing over enough of Puerto Rico to plunge tens of thousands of people into darkness. Many of them are still without power.

Then Hurricane Maria shredded the island’s electric grid and blacked out its 3.4 million residents virtually in toto.

The island had two large wind farms, one of which was severely damaged. The other survived, but had no grid through which to distribute its electricity.

Some solar arrays on the island were also severely damaged.

But at a farm in Barranquitas owned by Hector Santiago, 244 solar panels kept some 2,500 light bulbs alight to maximize greenhouse plant growth. Much to the derision of his neighbors, Santiago had invested some $300,000 in the solar array. Small gas and kerosene-fired generators kicked back up around the island. But Santiago’s solar array may well have been its biggest operating power station. 

Over the following months, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) tried to restore its rickety poles and wires, plus its network of obsolete gas and oil plants … and the ancient coal plant that burns ore from Colombia.

Along the way, PREPA’s director was fired, and Governor Ricardo Antonio “Ricky” Rosselló Nevares has campaigned to privatize the utility, a move strongly opposed by democracy activists.

On April 8, as PREPA was bringing the island back up to near-total power, restoration workers felled a tree onto live transmission wires, knocking out power to some 850,000 customers.

Ten days later, PREPA proudly announced that it had restored power to 95.8 percent of the island’s population. Some 62,000 customers were still in the dark. But PREPA was proud that each the territory’s 78 municipalities had at least some power.

Literally within hours, Puerto Rico was again plunged into darkness. The same contractor that on April 8 had dropped a tree into the grid now ran an excavator that shorted out the entire system. Once again, 
Puerto Rico was without central-generated electric power.

But now there was much more solar. In the wake of Irma and Maria, Solartopian activists have poured thousands of photovoltaic panels into the island. Strongly advocating that they become the centerpiece of a rebuilt energy supply system, many collectors now power locally owned micro-grids.

According to Elon Musk, Tesla has helped make 662 locations energy self-sufficient. Key has been San Juan’s Hospital del Nino, which in just two weeks was made energy self-sufficient with panels and batteries.

Nearly all the island’s hospitals were knocked out by Maria. Dialysis machines, operating rooms, air 
conditioning and other key services went dead. Many still are.

Ironically, according to activist Joel Segal, much of the nation’s supply of pain-killing morphine and Dilaudid also went away, as they are mostly (for tax purposes) manufactured in Puerto Rico.

While referring uniformly to this latest centrally-generated fiasco as a “total” blackout, the corporate media have almost totally ignored this steady, fast-growing stream of power being generated on Puerto Rico, virtually all of it solar.

CNN did cover a local named “Frank,” who after Maria took his home solar with $7500 in system components. Wired has reported on a Brooklyn architect, Andrew Marvel (a grand-nephew of the famed futurist Buckminster Fuller), who plans to use grants of $625,000 for his Resilient Power Puerto Rico to build 25 small arrays with Tesla battery backups. Another 75 or more may follow.

During my California Solartopia show on KPFK-Pacifica in Los Angeles, a listener pledged $20,000 for a 
neighborhood micro-grid linked with solar panels and batteries.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Stacey Plackett (D-Virgin Islands) have asked FEMA to take the island solar. So has San Juan’s progressive mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz.

But it’s all too hot for the corporate media.

In December PREPA and the New York governor’s office estimated that $17.6 billion was needed to revamp Puerto Rico’s old grid, funds that could instead help take the island totally solar.

To put that in perspective: Governor Andrew Cuomo wants New York ratepayers to fork over $8 billion to keep four decrepit upstate reactors on line, despite their owners’ attempts to close them. Ohio’s 
FirstEnergy just asked Trump to force ratepayers to fork over $8 billion PER YEAR in “emergency funding” to prop up four more dying nukes and scores of obsolete coal burners.

Ironically, the blacked-out story of Puerto Rico having already inadvertently gone almost entirely solar has opened the brightest window onto a sustainable future.

A Solartopian Puerto Rico would enjoy permanent, reliable service, free of fuel costs and protected from the ravages of the inevitable next storm while avoiding the emissions that would help cause and intensify it.

But a Solartopian Puerto Rico would threaten the Trumpian corporatists who want to “restore” the island’s central, fossil-fired, utterly corrupted grid, which is sure to go down in the next global-warmed hurricane. Or by the next felled tree and errant excavator.

Puerto Rico’s Solartopian moments are big news. So are the solar panels and micro-grids that could help the island survive the next hurricanes (season starts June 1) and corporate wrecking crews.

Let’s keep those panels coming!

To learn more contact me at solartopia.org.

Hear this at prn.fm with Joel Segal & David Braun:  http://prn.fm/solartopia-green-power-wellness-hour-04-19-18/

===============================

* Zie o.a.: 'Sint Maarten bukt nog steeds onder de gevolgen van orkaan Irma, pas na bijna 8 maanden maakt Nederland wat geld over........' Voor meer berichten over het schandalige gedrag van Nederland i.z. Sint Maarten, klik op het label met die naam, of op 'orkaan Irma', direct onder dit bericht.

Zie ook: 
'Puerto Rico ('VS') wordt nog steeds slecht of niet geholpen voor gevolgen orkaan Maria >> Trump: 'eiland krijgt teveel hulp'' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

'Trump: VS heeft een geweldige prestatie geleverd met de hulp aan Puerto Rico na orkaan Maria.......... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'6.000 doden i.p.v. 60 op Puerto Rico na Orkaan Maria, zo gaat de VS met haar burgers om.........'

'Puerto Rico het Sint Maarten van de VS: dodental orkaan Maria bijgesteld naar 2.975 en bijna een jaar later zit een groot deel van het eiland zonder stroom'