The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a $325 million funding opportunity with the goal to improve community-level energy resilience for vulnerable populations across Puerto Rico.
The new Programa de Comunidades Resilientes, funded by a second tranche of DOE’s Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund (PR-ERF) will provide funding for solar and battery storage installations for community healthcare facilities as well as community centers and other common areas within public housing and privately owned subsidized multi-family properties.
“Every municipality in Puerto Rico has a facility that could be eligible for an installation through the Programa de Comunidades Resilientes,” said Maria Robinson, Director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office. “This program will be a key tool in improving community-level resilience, ensuring that emergency rooms stay powered, residents of multifamily housing can refrigerate medicine and food, and vital services remain available during outages within low- and middle-income communities.”
DOE anticipates awarding between $70 million and $140 million to fund solar and battery installations for federally qualified healthcare centers, dialysis centers, and diagnostic and treatment centers.
Between $93 million and $185 million is expected to go to solar and battery installations in multi-family housing properties, subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S, Department of Agriculture. This includes community centers and common areas within public housing or privately owned multi-family housing properties available to all residents or shared building infrastructure that depends on electricity, such as elevators.
Applications to this funding opportunity are due on October 22, 2024, at 5:00 PM EST. Potential applicants may access an online Teaming Partner List to express their interest to other applicants and explore potential partnerships.
After devastating hurricanes and decades of underinvestment in the island’s electric grid, the U.S. government introduced the $1 billion funding package called PR-ERF to support residential solar and storage projects in Puerto Rico. In July this year, DOE announced its first installations of subsidized residential solar and battery storage systems through the PR-ERF’s Programa Acceso Solar.
Puerto Rico’s distributed solar capacity reached 842 MW by April this year, while residential storage has reached 1.6 GWh. Consultancy Wood Mackenzie has projected that over the next ten years more than 90% of Puerto Rico’s solar additions will be distributed solar.
Puerto Rico’s Act 17 calls for reaching an ambitious 40% renewable generation by 2025, followed by 60% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.
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