Puerto Rico

Brief history

Puerto Rico is the smallest island in the chain known as the Greater Antilles, which is located in the Caribbean Sea. For four centuries the island was a colony of Spain, before becoming a U.S. territory in 1898. The island’s first inhabitants, referred to as archaic, migrated from the Orinoco river valley, in the northern region of South America, more than two thousand years ago. When the Spaniards first arrived in Borinquén (the name given to the island by its native population), during Christopher Columbus’ second voyage to the Americas in 1493, they encountered a culture known as the Taino, who were part of the Arawak ethnic group that extended across the Greater Antilles. This indigenous culture and its legacy have left an indelible mark on the culture of Puerto Rico.

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Our Problem

Hurricanes, Power grids & Economic dependence

Over 80% of Puerto Rico’s power grid was recently destroyed in hurricanes Irma and Maria. However, even before these storms ravaged the electric utilities on the island country, a lack of maintenance and upgrades under unstable and underfunded PREPA leadership led to a grid susceptible to collapse, with many natives citing downed power lines and power outages as a normal occurrence. As a design team, we aim to design a power grid for Puerto Rico that is more reliable and makes maintenance easy and possible should other natural disasters occur. Our proposed solution encompasses every area of the country’s current electrical utility system, including but not limited to upgraded generation stations, transmission lines, and utility poles. We will also assess the economic impact of redesigning the electric grid through costs, jobs created, and the asset of creating a safe, reliable power grid for the country.

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Our solution

Deliverables

At the end of our project, we aim to have a written proposal encompassing both the technical and economic factors associated with Puerto Rico’s power grid. The components of the physical, technological redesign will encompass the entirety of the country and discuss the current grid, technologies, and generation systems. From this basis, the proposal will suggest the addition of solutions such as solar resources, increased energy storage, interconnecting microgrids, and the addition of other energy technologies such as gas turbines or a natural gas deliquification plant. The grid shall be designed with natural disasters in mind with components that can withstand severe weather. The economic redesign will propose solutions related to subsidization of utilities in the commercial, industrial, and residential sectors. The cost and price of energy will be discussed and a solution related to these findings will be presented. This economic report will also encompass the costs and profits associated with installation of new physical energy components such as solar and wind farms, gas turbines or a natural gas deliquification plant, as well as present information as to lost money due to lack of maintenance and blackouts. Overall, this written proposal will describe the proposed technologies along with their locations, specifications, and costs, as well as outline the proposed economic model to be adopted to best profit the country. The plan will also have short and long-term cost outlines for implementing this plan. The combined report will be delivered by December of 2018.

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