For María Pérez, a resident of Salinas on Puerto Rico’s southern coast, the promise of energy independence was a matter of survival. Living with a heart condition that makes extreme heat dangerous, Pérez relies on air conditioning to navigate the island’s humid summer months. After enduring months of darkness following Hurricane Maria in 2017 and facing similar risks during Hurricane Fiona, she spent two years documenting her income and home ownership to qualify for a federal solar program.
That security vanished in January. The Trump administration cut nearly $1 billion in solar funding for Puerto Rico, terminating a program designed to provide rooftop solar panels and battery storage to the island’s most vulnerable residents. For Pérez, who had already cleared every administrative hurdle, the news was abrupt. “My turn was next,” she said. “Why did this happen?”
The funding was part of the Energy Resilience Fund, a $1 billion initiative established by Congress in 2022 to safeguard low-income and medically fragile citizens from the frequent collapses of the island’s fragile power grid. While the program was intended to reach up to 40,000 people, only about 6,000 systems were installed before the administration paused and eventually rescinded the payments.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has since redirected more than a third of those funds to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the government-owned utility that has managed the island’s electricity for decades. The move marks a fundamental shift in strategy: moving away from “distributed energy”—where individuals produce their own power—and back toward a centralized grid managed by a utility long plagued by mismanagement, and bankruptcy.
The Failure of Centralized Power
The decision to redirect funds to PREPA comes despite a documented history of the utility’s inability to execute large-scale modernization. Following Hurricane Maria, Congress allocated more than federal recovery funds to modernize the grid, including a specific pool of more than $17 billion. However, records indicate that PREPA completed just 16 projects, spending less than $100 million of those allocated funds over the course of a decade.
PREPA has spent roughly nine years navigating one of the longest utility bankruptcy proceedings in U.S. History, burdened by billions in bond debt. Even after the government contracted generation to Genera and distribution to Luma Energy, reliability remained poor and electricity costs on the island remained roughly double the U.S. National average.
The current administration argues that the centralized approach is more efficient. According to a DOE FAQ page, the goal is to provide reliable power “for the greatest number of Puerto Ricans” by repairing fossil fuel plants and modernizing the existing grid. The agency stated that continuing to fund rooftop solar would “exacerbate reliability issues with the distribution grid” and only serve a tiny segment of the population.
Lessons from Hurricane Fiona
The push for distributed solar was not based on theory, but on the observed success of the technology during recent disasters. When Hurricane Fiona struck, residents with private solar and battery systems largely maintained power while the rest of the grid failed. Sunnova Energy, a major installer on the island, reported that 97 percent of its 30,000 customers had access to electricity in the days following the storm.
This resilience provided a lifeline for fishermen refrigerating their catch, hospitals maintaining critical equipment, and residents using ventilators or oxygen machines. These results led the late Representative Raúl Grijalva and other lawmakers to champion the $1 billion Energy Resilience Fund, specifically requesting that the DOE prioritize low-income people with disabilities.
| Feature | Distributed Solar (Resilience Fund) | Centralized Grid (PREPA Focus) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Individual household autonomy | System-wide grid stability |
| Target Population | Low-income & medically vulnerable | General population (3.2 million) |
| Reliability Source | Local batteries & rooftop panels | Centralized fossil fuel plants |
| Historical Success | 97% uptime for some during Fiona | Chronic outages & bankruptcy |
The Administrative Deadlock
For community organizers, the termination of the grants felt like a betrayal after years of grueling groundwork. Wanda Ríos, who leads the AbeynoCoop energy cooperative in Salinas, spent over a year helping elderly residents in the La Margarita community gather the financial and medical records required to qualify for the program.
Ríos and her partners, including the advocacy group Solar United Neighbors, had been awarded a $6 million grant intended to install 150 systems in Salinas. However, the process stalled in the final stages. David Ortiz, a senior program director at Solar United Neighbors, said the organization spent months attempting to secure a “definitization” meeting with the agency to finalize budgets and updated costs—a meeting that never happened.
The silence ended in January with a formal letter informing the group that their grant was being terminated. Because federal rules often prevent organizations from applying for multiple funding sources for the same project, Ríos had turned away other potential grants, leaving her community without a backup plan.
The fallout has left thousands of Puerto Ricans in a precarious position as the next hurricane season approaches. While the DOE maintains that centralized repairs will eventually benefit all 3.2 million residents, critics and former officials question the risk of handing more money to a utility with a history of failure.
María Pérez is now attempting to fund her own solar system through private nonprofit grants. Despite the loss of federal support, she remains determined to secure her own power. “I’ll find a way,” she said.
The next official checkpoint for the reallocation of these funds will be the upcoming federal budget reviews and potential oversight hearings regarding the Department of Energy’s noncompetitive grant process for PREPA.
Do you have experience with energy resilience or the Puerto Rican power grid? Share your thoughts in the comments or reach out to our newsroom.
Disclaimer: This article provides information regarding federal funding and utility management for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or legal advice.
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