New Microgrid Lab in Adjuntas Promises Energy Innovation for Puerto Rico
Austin Cappon, vice president of engineering for New Sun Road, visited Puerto Rico last month to help commission the Stellar Edge controller at the Adjuntas Casa Pueblo microgrid. He also met with Massol Deyá, who co-founded Casa Pueblo decades ago.
New Sun Road’s technology is enabling real-time monitoring of existing system assets in the microgrid cluster, which include solar power and battery storage. The microgrid orchestration work includes a partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is funded through a U.S. Department of Energy grant.
“Set in mountainous terrain subject to strong rain and wind, the site experiences regular power outages even more so than the endemic island-wide power outages that often make headlines,” reads the New Sun Road LinkedIn post about Adjuntas and its microgrids. “Unique is the number of true microgrids that have been constructed locally, with the ability to fully island from the utility in the event of an outage.”
The Casa Pueblo Living Energy Innovation Laboratory will interconnect the microgrids into a network that, once fully realized, will communicate with each other to maximize energy usage and protect community resiliency during daily operations and emergency situations.
“We’re not just interconnecting microgrids to create Puerto Rico and the Caribbean’s first solar microgrid network—we’re doing so in a real-world learning environment, with authentic climate variables, natural events, failures of the traditional power grid, real people and consumption patterns, and live data,” Massol Deyá pointed out.
Adjuntas is a town of about 18,000 residents sometimes called “the Switzerland of Puerto Rico” because of its mountainous environment and relatively chilly weather compared to the rest of the island. It is located inside the Cordillera Central mountain range.
The community has been impacted by numerous cataclysmic events, including Hurricane Maria and Fiona, which destroyed electrical infrastructure in 2017 and 2022, respectively. An earthquake in 2020 also severely damaged the power facilities in the town.
The Casa Pueblo-based Living Energy Innovation Laboratory will also work with universities to offer technical guidance to students on microgrid design, equipment, operation, repair and maintenance.