Empowering Culebra

During this past quarter, we continued with meetings to engage the community-at-large to solarize the municipal island of Culebra. We’ve also been identifying the potential sites and the feasibility of the development of micro-grids on them. Some of the sites might need an environmental impact assessment for which we’ll work directly with EDA and potentially EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). We foresee to start on-site construction by Summer of 2020. We also engaged in the design of the human resources infrastructure and the publication of public notices to hire the project manager and other professional resources.

As our planning phase continues, we had previously engaged Prudential and Global Giving with a support of $220,000; we recently engaged an anonymous donor who granted $25,000. The $245,000 coming from philanthropic partners will be used to match the $1 million match requirement from EDA. We are still needing $755,000 to match.

The municipal island of Culebra is located to the northeast of our mainland with a population of approximately 1,400. The island received proper energy supply by March 2019, almost a year and a half after Hurricane María hit our shores. Since we had already empowered, through a participatory process, the first solar community in Toro Negro – Ciales, where 20 energy systems form the community’s solar microgrid providing energy to 28 residences that benefit more than 70 residents, we set a goal to transform Culebra’s energy system into a renewable energy system.