Eaton, Enel X announce second Puerto Rico microgrid project

Power management company Eaton and Enel X have announced plans for a second joint solar-plus-storage microgrid project at the Eaton Las Piedras manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico. Microgrids are a sustainable way to meet a country’s growing energy needs from renewable sources while helping to fight climate change. They also improve quality of life for consumers because they make the electricity supply more reliable and resilient, especially under extreme weather conditions. This is important because large-scale power outages have increased by 67% since 2000 and continue to impact millions of communities and businesses in the US, according to Climate Central. Microgrids can counteract these events by balancing where, when and how electricity is consumed, including during blackouts. They also provide added value by generating renewable energy from solar panels. This energy can be consumed, or stored and delivered back to the local grid to reduce stress on regional utility infrastructure.

In response, Eaton requested support from Enel X, which designed a microgrid to enable the Las Piedras facility to maintain operations in case of utility power disruptions and to ensure its over 1,000 employees can continue working.

 

Together, the Arecibo and Las Piedras microgrids will cut emissions by 8,345 metric tons in the first year of operations, create new construction jobs in the community, enable significant cost savings over the next 20 years, and contribute 10 MW of solar PV and 2.23 MW/4.46 MWh of battery storage in the country by 2022.

 In this way they will reduce demand on regional energy infrastructure, enable Eaton to power manufacturing with more renewables and boost energy resilience for its operations.