Generac awarded up to $200 million from DOE for solar and storage in Puerto Rico

The funds seek to build energy resilience in Puerto Rico, where hurricanes and other extreme weather frequently leave residents without power.

July 18, 2024 Ryan Kennedy

Image: Pexels

Generac Power Systems announced it has been awarded a grant of up to $200 million over a five year term by the Department of Energy to install distributed solar and energy storage systems in Puerto Rico.

The funds come as part of the $1 billion Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund. Under the program’s Solar Access Fund, Generac will facilitate the installation of residential solar and storage for disadvantaged Puerto Rican households. Installations are expected to begin in August 2024.

The projects are planned to be installed in low-income areas that experience frequent and prolonged power outages as well as household where a resident has energy-dependent disability needs.

The program will also help Puerto Rico achieve its renewable energy and resilience goals. In 2017, when back-to-back hurricanes destroyed around 80% of Puerto Rico’s electric grid and resulted in thousands of lives lost, Puerto Rico passed Act 17, a policy to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.

“We’ve been providing reliable backup power solutions to the people of Puerto Rico for more than 20 years, including after Hurricane Maria devastated the island’s power grid and left 95% of residents without electricity,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, president and CEO at Generac. He added, “We are proud to be a recipient of this DOE grant to provide clean, resilient, efficient power for those who are often underserved during outages.”

Generac will be partnering with several companies on the program:

PathStone, a nonprofit organization providing community and workforce development and humanitarian services in Puerto Rico since 1998 and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), a clean energy non-profit established in 1982 that leads groundbreaking community programs and market research, will together coordinate additional local community efforts to serve as liaisons between Solar Ambassadors, installers, and eligible recipients.
FR-BLDM, a leading local contractor with years of government program management experience will lead installations working with other local, small, family-owned businesses in Puerto Rico.
Juapi Energy, a PWRcell installer and Generac Service Dealer in Puerto Rico will provide service support to residents and will perform installations.
Palmetto, a leading climate technology company accelerating the adoption of clean energy, will extend three of its commercial software applications: fintech platform, installation partner portal, and asset management services.

“Supporting local companies is an important part of our objective to provide reliable and sustainable
energy solutions to Puerto Rico’s most vulnerable communities,” said Norm Taffe, president of Energy Technology at Generac.

Distributed solar and storage programs in Puerto Rico have already shown some success. In May, residential solar company Sunrun said it had enrolled nearly 1,800 customers and more than 2,000 batteries onto its PowerOn Puerto Rico program. Sunrun’s battery fleet dispatches stored solar energy from customers’ batteries to stabilize the grid and avoid blackouts and the use of fossil fuel power plants. Customers are compensated for their participation, with Sunrun predicting at least an average of $550 per customer. Sunrun expects that there will be between 50 and 125 events per year that will require Sunrun’s fleet of enrolled systems to provide on-demand energy, stabilizing the local grid.

Read more about the Department of Energy’s grid modernization programs.

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