Energy Resilience Fund has yielded only a handful of rooftop solar units so far

According to a recent report, one of two U.S. solar firms awarded funding to oversee implementation of the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund program has acknowledged that just “a small, initial batch” of rooftop solar installations have been completed across the island so far.

By The Star Staff

Two years after its creation, the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund, a $1 billion fund that seeks to help stabilize the power grid via the installation of thousands of rooftop solar units, has yielded only a tiny handful of solar panel systems, according to a probe by the Washington Free Beacon.

“We’re talking about energy and solar. That’s where the power is, right there,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during a speech in Puerto Rico earlier this year in which she touted the fund designed by Democrats in 2022. The fund has taken a central role in the administration’s plans to, as President Biden said in October 2022, “transform the entire” Puerto Rican grid, the Free Bacon report notes.

While the Department of Energy declined to tell the Free Beacon how many solar panels have been installed using program funds, the paper said Sunnova Energy -- one of two U.S. solar firms awarded funding to oversee implementation of the program -- acknowledged that just “a small, initial batch” of installations have been completed across the entire island so far. The other firm, Generac Holdings, declined to comment, according to the newspaper.

“The island is in the thick of hurricane season and high temperatures, and families on the island continue to battle weekly, or in some cases daily, power disruptions,” a solar industry expert with knowledge of the program’s inner workings told the Free Beacon. “We need to figure out how to move faster.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), one of the program’s architects, recently said the initial batch of solar installations was completed in mid-July, months after the Department of Energy originally promised.

The slow rollout of the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund highlights the challenges facing the Biden-Harris administration as it attempts to oversee an influx of billions of dollars in green energy funding nationwide. And it further highlights the ongoing energy-related issues facing residents of Puerto Rico -- in addition to the federal government’s ongoing inability to fully address those issues.

In recent years, Puerto Rico has been hit with a number of catastrophic storms and hurricanes that have inflicted substantial damage on the island and its power grid. Democrats have sought to address that damage through green energy programs. At the same time, residential electricity rates have surged, recently hitting an average of 23.77 cents per kilowatt-hour, the Associated Press reported last month, or 44% higher than the U.S. average.

The media have given little attention to the program because of the Biden-Harris administration’s decision not to provide a progress update on installations. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and New York Democratic Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, traveled to San Juan on July 17 to trumpet the program but, again, didn’t share information about the number of installations that have been completed.

The Department of Energy has said it has processed thousands of applications for the program and expects to complete at least 3,000 installations by the end of the year.

Roughly seven months after the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund was established, Energy Department officials announced the agency would release $453 million of the $1 billion earmarked for the program. Then, in November 2023, the agency released the awardees for that first tranche: Sunnova, Generac, and a handful of smaller Puerto Rican firms. Sunnova and Generac are set to each receive $200 million to deploy the solar systems.