PR100 1-Year Progress Update (Text Version)
This is the text version of the webinar PR100 1-Year Progress Update: Preliminary Modeling Results and High-Resolution Solar and Wind Data Sets.
In this webinar, the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transition to 100% Renewable Energy (PR100) study team provided an update on progress made during the first year of this 2-year, stakeholder-informed study.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Welcome. Good morning to everyone joining us from the state side. And good afternoon to those here in Puerto Rico joining us. We are really excited that today we get to report out on the 1-year progress update of the PR100, our preliminary modeling results and high-resolution solar and wind data sets. We are going to be with you for the next hour and 15 minutes for what we hope will be a really informative presentation and conversation. You can jump to the next slide.
Welcome
My name is Charlotte Gossett Navarro, and I am the chief director of the Hispanic Federation here in Puerto Rico. We are working with the National Renewable Energy Lab to support the stakeholder engagement here of the PR100 study. And today, I will be your moderator.
You can jump to the next slide.
Agenda
Want to review with you our agenda today. So after we do our welcomes, we're going to hear opening remarks from Dr. Martin Keller, the director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, followed by remarks from the secretary, Jennifer Granholm, of the U.S. Department of Energy. Then the lab team is going to go straight into the 1-year updates of the PR100, followed by a great discussion with Secretary Granholm, Administrator Deanne Criswell, and Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi on the implementation. After that, we're going to have time for some question and answer. We can jump to the next slide.
Housekeeping
So some basics of the webinar today. We do have Spanish interpretation available. [Language other than English spoken]. You have to click on the little globe, where it says interpretation on the bottom of your Zoom page. We also, there, have the option for American Sign Language. All of your audio and video is muted here. So if you do have questions, please share them in the Q&A portion of the webinar. You can also use the chat function to share ideas, introduce yourself so we know who's on the call. But if you do have questions, we don't want them to get lost in the chat. So please put them into the Q&A. Some of those questions, we'll be able to answer live and in writing. And others will hold off until the end to be able to answer. Today's meeting is being recorded. You will—and we'll be shared with you later. So with that, I want to jump right into today's presentation, starting with our opening remarks.
Opening Remarks
And so again, we're going to hear first from Dr. Martin Keller of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and then we will be hearing from U.S. Secretary of the Department of Energy Jennifer Granholm. And so I'd like to welcome Director Martin Keller.
>>Martin Keller: So thank you and hello to everybody. It's really fantastic to have so many gathered here to learn about the progress that have been made over the past year since we launched the PR, or Puerto Rico, 100 study. It's a great privilege for us to support Puerto Rico in the goal of transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2050. The vision and leadership that display our model for other communities.
In the first year of the 2-year study, annual researchers have worked together closely with counterparts at Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia National Laboratory to create a modeling foundation to assess Puerto Rico's pathway for reaching its energy resilience and justice goals for all of its residents. In the first year, the team identified feasible scenarios for the Puerto Rico to achieve its goals as set forth in Act 17. You will be hearing about the progress in this webinar.
And now, it's my great honor to welcome the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. Her passion and commitment to a clean energy future for all inspires and guides all of us to do this work. Madam Secretary, thank you for being with us.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Of course. Thank you, Martin. And hello, everybody. It is wonderful to see, what do we have, 659? So many people tuning in today because this is so utterly important, the future of Puerto Rico's energy system.
So as many of you know, in 2019, Puerto Rico set a series of really bold commitments leading to this goal of 100% renewable electricity generation by 2050. And the Biden-Harris administration stands behind Puerto Rico's efforts to meet those commitments. Our PR100 study is all about figuring out how. How Puerto Rico can meet their goals.
So let me just take a moment to thank DOE's Grid Deployment Office and the staff that is spread across six of our national labs, who are working to lay out these pathways that Puerto Rico can take to reach that 100% goal and to build what is a truly resilient and reliable power system all along the way. The PR100 group kicked off this 2-year study last February, knowing just how critical these goals are to Puerto Rico's safety and to Puerto Rico's well-being.
And the urgency has only grown after Hurricane Fiona, which—Category 1 storm—after that storm wreaked so much havoc, President Biden created the Puerto Rico Grid Modernization and Recovery Team and asked me to oversee it. And in the time since, we have set out to cut through bureaucracy to get federal funding moving to fix Puerto Rico's energy challenges. We've traveled to Puerto Rico to meet with you and hear directly from local officials and community leaders about the challenges on the ground. And be back again very soon, like, next week.
We've tapped the first chairman of the Puerto Rico Energy Commission. His name is Agustín Carbó. He will be moderating the conversation later in the webinar. And he's going to be the team's director on the ground there in Puerto Rico. And with Augustine as our eyes and ears on the ground, we've really deepened essential partnerships with folks throughout the Puerto Rican and federal government.
And with those partners, we're actively—actively working to accelerate approval for new clean energy projects and to help rebuild the existing energy infrastructure. This Puerto Rico 100 study can really help to guide those projects, ensuring that they're informed by local knowledge and designed to meet local needs and following local priorities. This is all about the partnership with Puerto Rico and informed by Puerto Ricans.
As we said, we're just at the halfway point of the study, but we already have these key findings that will—can and should and will shape our grid modernization efforts on the ground this year. So for instance, we can now say, with confidence, that Puerto Rico has the potential to generate enough renewable energy to meet its total demand, now and through 2050. And we also know that simply stabilizing the grid and meeting an acceptable standard for reliability is going to require hundreds of additional megawatts of generation capacity right now.
And so today, you're going to be getting a detailed update—excuse me—from members of our Puerto Rico 100 team on all of their findings. And then I'll be joining, as was mentioned, Governor Pedro Pierluisi of Puerto Rico and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell for a discussion about how we can use our progress on this study to get Puerto Rico on track toward this clean energy transition and future.
So I want to thank all of our listeners, once again, for your interest and your support. And I'll turn it over to Charlotte. And then I'll be back soon for our panel discussion.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you, Secretary Granholm and Dr. Keller, for your opening remarks. Now we're going to jump into a little poll because we want to learn who is here with us, who is engaging, and how much you already know about PR100. If you can believe it, it's already been a year since this first launched. And so there have been a lot of different ways that the PR100 study has tried to engage and share information with the community and with stakeholders across Puerto Rico and across the states.
Poll Question #1
[Text on screen: Which PR100 study events have you attended so far?]
And so if you could take a moment, the link to the poll is in the chat. If you open that up, you can also do it on your phone by texting NRELWEBINARS303 to the number 22333. And then let us know which of these activities you have already participated. For some of you, this may be the very first time you're engaging with the PR100 study. Some joined us a year ago, in February 2022, when they first announced what was going to be happening for the next 2 years. This summer, we did a 6-month progress update, and we know a lot of you joined us for.
And then hopefully, we have some of our members of the AG team here as well, our steering committee team, or the project team joining us, who are the folks who are engaging almost monthly in this work. Well, certainly, for some of the project team, this is probably more of a daily activity. But our AG team has been meeting nearly monthly to help provide input into this. So let us know who's joining us.
Right now, it looks like for many of you, this is the first time that you are joining, which is actually really exciting because we do want to more and more have new people engage, understand what the PR100 is, and really begin to be able to participate. And we're going to share later ways that the general public can participate in this. So this is great. Wow, there's a lot of people here for the first time, who will be hearing about this information.
And so then with that—oh, I'm seeing that some folks are not quite understanding. Oh, we're putting it into the Q&A here, the answers as well. So we have a lot of people, A, in the Q&A. We have some people in the chat as well. Again, if you didn't, you can click on the link in the chat and it'll take you to a website where you can complete that survey.
But as we see, most of the people so far who have completed it are here for the very first time. And so with that, I'm going to jump then right into the PR100 update—if we can go to the next slide—because I want you to hear from the lab team.
And so today we're going to hear from a portion of the lab team. There are quite a lot of people who have been working on the PR100 study, and four of them have joined us today to give the updates of Year 1.
We have Robin Burton from the National Renewable Energy Lab, Nate Blair from the National Renewable Energy Lab, Tom Harris also from National Renewable Energy Lab, and we also have Marcelo Elizondo. So we are going to start by passing to Robin Burton of NREL.
>>Robin Burton: Thanks very much, Charlotte. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. As Charlotte mentioned, it's really exciting to see that many of you have participated in previous events and that more than half of you are joining us for the first time. So welcome to all of you.
Again, my name is Robin Burton. I'm a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Lab and I'm co-leading the PR100 study. My fellow presenters and I speak to you on behalf of the dozens of researchers from across the six national laboratories contributing to this effort. We're excited to be at the halfway point of the study and to share some of our preliminary findings with you.
These preliminary findings were also released today in a summary report in English and a Spanish version will be available in coming days. We're also publishing slides from today's presentation in English and Spanish, along with recordings of the webinar. I do want to emphasize that these are preliminary findings and our final results will be published at the end of this year. And for those of you not yet familiar with the study, we'll start with a quick overview. Next slide, please.
What is the PR100 Study?
So what is the PR100 study? PR100 is a comprehensive analysis of possible pathways for Puerto Rico to achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050. And the study is based on extensive stakeholder input. The study is part of a broader portfolio of technical assistance the DOE and the national labs are providing to Puerto Rico to help decision makers chart the course for Puerto Rico's clean energy transition and will provide similar assistance to other communities, including the LA100 study, among other ongoing efforts across the country. It's a coordinated effort, led by FEMA, the Department of Energy, and NREL, leveraging the unique tools and capabilities across the six contributing labs. Next slide, please.
How Stakeholders Can Use PR100 Study Results
So how can stakeholders use the results of the study? The intention of the study is to generate a set of results, including data and models that outline different alternatives or possible pathways for how Puerto Rico can achieve its resilience and renewable energy goals. The study results are intended to answer stakeholder questions and inform decision making based on data modeling and analysis. It will be up to stakeholders within Puerto Rico to choose which path is best for Puerto Rico, based on the results that we provide, and to implement the results. Next slide, please.
Activities of Puerto Rico 100% Renewable Energy Study
The study is organized into five general activities, outlined on this slide. So you'll see the bar across the top is activity one, and it spans and underpins the full study. So we're really focused on responsive stakeholder engagement throughout the entire study, as well as incorporating principles of energy justice into how the study is conducted and how we engage with stakeholders as part of the process.
The second activity is data gathering and generation. We've largely conducted this activity during the first year of the study by conducting resource assessments for the potential resource availability in Puerto Rico and demand projections for adoption of distributed energy resources, including load, electric vehicle adoption, energy efficiency, and distributed solar and storage.
The third activity is scenario generation and capacity evaluation. This activity began in the first year and will continue into Year 2. So we're conducting detailed scenario generation, based on the data inputs, including production cost and resource adequacy assessments.
The fourth activity to be conducted largely in the second year is impact modeling and analysis. So this will include bulk system analysis for enhanced resilience—some of which you'll hear about today—distribution system analysis, which is largely being conducted in Year 2, and economic impacts.
The fifth activity is the publishing of reports, visualizations, and conducting extensive outreach with stakeholders across Puerto Rico, including an implementation roadmap in which we'll outline possible pathways for implementation of the study. Next slide.
PR100 Timeline
The timeline of the study spans two years, and again, we're here at the Year 1 mark in the middle of the study. The deliverables in the gray box at the middle, our high-resolution data sets for wind and solar resource, actually, for 20 years is what we're providing. As well as three feasible scenarios with high-level pathways, which we'll describe during this presentation and also is described in the summary report, that I mentioned earlier, out today. You can see, again, that activity one spans the full study and then the phases of time that the additional activities are covering. Next slide.
Questions Answered in 1-Year Update
So there are a number of questions that we answer here at the Year 1 mark that we'll talk about further today. Does Puerto Rico have enough renewable resources to meet its electricity demand or load now and through 2050? You heard Secretary Granholm mention that the answer is yes. And we're going to talk to you more about that today.
How is energy demand expected to change in the future? How much rooftop solar and storage capacity is projected to be deployed through 2050, based on scenario assumptions? How does the system perform now compared to national standards? What are the areas most impacted by hurricanes across Puerto Rico? And what do Puerto Ricans prioritize in the transition to renewable energy? So again, we'll aim to answer that—these questions today and in the summary report. Next slide.
So with that, I'd like to talk with you about some preliminary findings and key considerations from our activity one, stakeholder engagement and energy justice up to this point. Next slide.
Advisory Group Formation and Engagement
As we've mentioned before, we have convened an advisory group of nearly 100 representatives of almost 60 organizations from across public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including academia, community-based, and environmental organizations, solar and storage developers, local government agencies, and others. So shout out to all of our advisory group members who are with us today. It's been really fun seeing everybody introducing themselves in the chat, including some of our AG members, so welcome all.
We met mostly with the advisory group from February through July and then bi-monthly or quarterly, and we'll continue to meet through this calendar year. We've partnered with Hispanic Federation. We really appreciate their partnership, including Charlotte's moderation today, for facilitation and stakeholder engagement support. And we've partnered with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez to contribute to the study. Next slide.
Preliminary Findings on Stakeholder Engagement and Energy Justice
So we'll share now some preliminary findings based on our stakeholder engagement and energy justice work so far. We've heard from stakeholders or from advisory group members, in particular, that they really value the PR100 advisory group as a neutral forum, where stakeholders with a diverse set of perspectives can come together to discuss Puerto Rico's energy future within this context. One of the conversations that we facilitated among advisory group members early on had to do with what energy justice themes members prioritized.
And some of those themes that emerged from the discussion are energy access, affordability, reliability, and resilience, community participation, economic and workforce development, siting and land use, environmental and health effects, and public sector implementation. So we really appreciate hearing that feedback and then taking it to incorporate into how we are conducting this study throughout the duration. We've also conducted—we're conducting a social burden analysis as part of the energy justice task.
And our baseline social burden analysis, in the early phase, highlights inequitable access to critical services across geographic areas during normal grid operations. That analysis will continue into Year 2 and final results will be included in the final report. We're also conducting a climate risk assessment as part of the energy justice task. And initial climate risk assessment results illustrate a temperature increase of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius and a precipitation decrease of up to 20% across the entire archipelago by 2050. The chart on the right shows the distribution bisector of advisory group members represented in the group. Next slide, please.
Key Considerations: Energy Justice
So key considerations from our work in the energy justice space, in particular, are—and based on the literature review, engagement with stakeholders—are that energy justice involves prioritizing access to affordable, resilient electricity and high quality energy sector jobs and economic opportunities for the most vulnerable utility customers.
An important way to work toward energy justice is by developing a process to ensure broad and meaningful stakeholder participation in the planning, decision making, and implementation of the pathway to 100% renewable energy. Next slide. And with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Nate Blair, to discuss feasible scenarios over to you, Nate.
Feasible Scenarios
>>Nate Blair: Great. Thank you, Robin. I'm really excited to be here as well. Next slide, please.
I think for—it was great to see that a large number of people are seeing this study for the first time. And so for that reason, we'll do a little bit of background in a couple of these areas. And there's more information in the full report.
So we're doing a lot of scenario analysis, and this is something that the national labs have done for a long time in a variety of different locations and scenarios, or locations for scenarios. And what we're looking at is, as this graph shows, going from now out to 2050. Here, this one is—this scenario is obeying the Act 17 and getting to 100% clean energy by 2050.
And in these scenarios, we can vary a lot of different inputs, both from the energy demand side—so things like, what if we have more energy efficiency or more electric vehicle adoption or we have more value backup power or less? And then on the energy supply side, we can look at a range of different future costs. We can look at a range of different future options and resiliency requirements, et cetera. And so each of those different scenarios and ranges will provide us with an insight into the impact of those variables on the future. Next slide.
Initial Scenario Definitions
So throughout the last year, we've been working closely with the advisory group—and the people on the advisory group are listed in the report—and trying to get from them what are the most critical things, what are the big questions they have as we move towards 100% clean energy by 2050?
And you can see several of them listed here. Energy access, affordability, reliability and resilience, as you might expect, as well as siting, land use, environmental health effects, and economic and workforce development. All of those things have factored in to some of the thinking around our initial scenarios that we've put together.
And so we have four key scenarios that look at varying levels of distributed generation. And I'll talk more about those in a moment, focused primarily on rooftop solar and storage. And then in addition to that, there's a lot of uncertainty about the future of electric load or electric demand. And there are a lot of questions about land use, particularly around the inclusion or exclusion of agricultural lands for large-scale renewable development. So we've got variations around those factors, as well, that we have been looking at so far. Next slide, please.
Initial Scenarios Based on Distributed Solar and Storage
So the four scenarios focused on distributed solar and storage are listed here and described. Scenario 1 looks at what are the economics for the individual building owner as they seek to adopt, or not, rooftop solar and storage? What are those economic levels? And then the next one adds in, let's make sure that all of the critical services, like hospitals, fire stations, grocery stores, are also covered with rooftop PV and storage so that they're resilient in terms of emergencies. And then the third one says, well, let's take that scenario and then make sure that remote and low and moderate income households are covered. And then the fourth scenario, kind of the opposite end, is what happens if we add distributed solar and storage to all suitable rooftops to meet all of the load for those buildings by 2050? So that's kind of extreme, but across these different scenarios, we get an idea of the impact of distributed energy storage on the overall system. Next slide, please.
Modeling Adoption of Distributed Energy Resources
To do this, we use a tool that's been developed at NREL called dGen, or distributed generation market demand model. And it assigns, inside of the model, a kind of a computer agent to represent each of the different kinds of demographics that we look at. Residential, commercial buildings, industrial buildings. Then it applies a series of restrictions. How much rooftop is available? What are the—where can we put them close to these buildings, etc? And then on top of that, then we do a series of economic calculations to look at here's what you would pay for electricity without the system. Here's what you would pay with the system. And then from that, we look at how fast people will adopt. So even if things have short payback, we see that in the real world, people don't adopt systems quite as quickly as you might think. Next slide, please.
So we've got some results, they are preliminary. I think the key takeaway here is on the bottom of the screen, where we show that across all of these scenarios, the adoption of distributed solar and storage is projected to increase considerably. And you can see that we have somewhere between 3 GW and 7 GW of rooftop and storage capacity by 2050, which is a 6x increase in Scenario 1 over what we have today. And will include a significant increase in ramp up of the deployment of these systems. Scenario 4 is this 16x increase over where we're at today, which is a significant increase even beyond that in terms of the deployment rate. So we're reaching these high levels in the modeling. And what does that mean for the rest of the system, is a question that we continue to ask and answer in other modeling steps. Next slide, please.
Three Feasible Scenarios
And we're—in Scenario 1, with our roughly 3 GW, we're covering over 60% of the commercial buildings. That exceeds the fraction of commercial buildings that are these critical facilities, hospitals, fire stations, grocery stores, et cetera. And so going forward, we're going to combine those two scenarios, Scenario 1 and 2, into one scenario.
We have a lot more thinking to do on Scenario 3 about exactly where the remote communities are, where the low- and moderate-income households are. We're working with UPRM on that question, and helping us figure out exactly where to make sure those rooftops are built in the model. And then Scenario 4, we continue to examine as well. Next slide, please.
Renewable Energy Potential in Puerto Rico
So renewable energy potential in Puerto Rico, NREL and the other national labs have a history of creating a lot of data. All of this data is public. We are going to be using it for our modeling purposes, but we're also going to be sharing it public because we feel like the developers and the people coming up with utility scale and distributed systems will need this data as they go forward through 2050.
To date, we have created high-resolution resource data sets for land-based wind, offshore wind, and solar. And then we've also created forecast data, which is needed to look at uncertainty. So the solar resource data and wind resource data are all already available. We are working on marine hydropower and pumped storage hydropower, at this point. And as those get finished in this next year, those data sets will also be made available.
We are examining other resources and sources of renewable electricity as well. And as resource data is needed for those technologies, we will be developing that as well. Next slide, please.
Poll Question #2
OK, so next poll question, to make sure everyone's tracking along. What's your best guess about the amount of renewable energy resource potential in Puerto Rico compared with the local energy demand? A, it's not sufficient. It's roughly equal to the demand. More than double the demand. More than 10 times the demand. And we'll give people a minute to look at that and enter those in. Again, the link for the website was in the chat. Looks like we're settling into the resources about double the demand, with 10 times the demand coming in second. All right. So 44% is at double, 28% is at 10 times. So next slide, please.
Preliminary Findings From Renewable Energy Potential Distributed Energy Resource Adoption
So the answer that we've come up with, to date, is that the resource is more than 10 times the demand. And so if you—which is great news, as we head towards 100% renewable energy. As you see on the right here, we've got a number of the resources that we've already examined. I talked about rooftop PV utility, PV utility wind, offshore wind, ocean thermal, existing hydro.
Biofuel engines, we can import the biofuel and that can be almost a very large amount of potential. So the total there, not including the biofuel engines, is, as you can see, over 200 terawatt hours of potential, even in the more restrictive case, where we're not including agricultural lands. I have another slide on that in a minute. Compare that to the annual load in 2021, which is just under 19 terawatt hours. So you can see that, as we make use of these resources, they are really significant, and that's great.
So the preliminary finding is that the resource significantly exceeds the current and projected annual loads, and that the adoption of solar and storage is projected to increase across all scenarios. Next slide, please.
Land Availability: Solar Deployment
So we've looked at the land availability in great detail. And this is a solar slide, I have another wind slide. As you can see, as we remove places where you cannot build utility scale solar, so larger solar farms, and we're assuming that about 10 MW is our lower limit on this, below that we would call that maybe distributed. We've removed a number of things: water bodies, rivers, roads, buildings, habitat areas, protected areas, urban areas.
We have a contiguous land requirement. So you have to have—can't have a little chunk here and a little chunk there. And then the slope has to be below 5% for solar and 13% for wind. What you can see here is the difference between with and without agricultural lands, which is data that we've gotten from the planning board in Puerto Rico. As you zoom in on the left, you can see that, yes, there still are significant areas where you can build PV—or, sorry, solar. But it is fairly restricted. Next slide, please.
Land Availability: Land-Based Wind Deployment
And this is a similar statement for wind. There are, as you can, as your eye will tell you, there are more places where you could still build a wind farm or wind turbines. And, but again, the amount when you take out the agricultural land is less and with agricultural land is more. So next slide, please.
So we've got a couple of findings here. If only the utility-scale solar and land-based wind resources were deployed—so if you're only using those two, which are restricted without agricultural land—Puerto Rico could not meet its renewable energy capacity targets. So therefore, what we're now starting to think more about in year two is identifying alternate system configurations for deployment on smaller, specialized areas. So those would be things like brownfields. Those would be things like floating PV and other options on that front. Next slide.
Preliminary Findings for Electricity Demand
So let's talk about the load. I talked about how it compares to the resource, and as you look in the graph on the right here, we are looking at two load projections into the future. There's quite a bit of uncertainty around the overall load, or demand, of electricity for the island. And so we've worked with a number of groups and taken a lot of data to look at the green line, which is on the bottom, we're calling that the mid-case load. And that was going—the end uses, so the part that's used in the buildings, is going to be going down into the future. And that's consistent with other analysis in this area. And then we've added on energy efficiency as an option. And that will further reduce the load. Then we're looking at the inclusion of electric vehicles, and we have projections for those, and that will increase the load.
And then on net, we get this green line here, which decreases. We are also looking at a stress load, which is more the orange line. And the orange line, we want to increase so that we have captured that uncertainty between those two lines. What's left after this load is created is to meet that load with the distributed PV and storage. And then what's left after that, the net load from there will be met with the conventional grid. Next slide, please.
And with that, I would love to turn it over to my friend Tom Harris from NREL to talk a little more about scenario modeling.
Scenario Modeling
>>Tom Harris: Thank you, Nate. And thank you all for the opportunity to talk with you about our work [inaudible]. As Charlotte mentioned, I'm Tom Harris and my work focuses on [inaudible] optimization systems. In this section, we will talk about modeling of the large-scale power system, based on scale definitions, data, and analysis that [inaudible]. And this analysis is designed to optimize for the [inaudible] future.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Hey, Tom, if I can interrupt you for one moment, we're having a little trouble hearing you, with the audio. I don't know if there's an adjustment, perhaps, you can make? It's coming in a little bit in and out and a bit muffled.
>>Tom Harris: I think that's all I can do. I'll try to speak up a little bit, hopefully that works.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: So, well, let's give it a try. Let's see if we can hear you a little better now.
Engage Capacity Expansion Modeling
>>Tom Harris: So our analysis in this section is designed to optimize for the lowest cost [inaudible] portfolio that's capable of serving a projected move. [inaudible] resilience required [inaudible] scenario. Looks like this. This diagram on this slide [inaudible] it's two in [inaudible] it's from the analysis at a high level. As we [inaudible] it's to the analysis our representation of the system, our system [inaudible].
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Tom, we're, Tom, I'm sorry to keep interrupting you. We're still having quite a lot of difficulty understanding. I don't know if there's a phone option, perhaps, that you could call in?
>>Tom Harris: Let me try, let me try a headset.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Yeah, headset. See if that helps. Just want to make sure, I know these are important slides. I want to make sure everyone understands what you're sharing.
>>Tom Harris: [inaudible]
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Still similar. I don't hear that it has switched yet to the headset microphone. And…
>>Robin Burton: We have a couple of offers for alternate presenters. Nate offered to speak to slides and so did Cameron. And because the audio issue is persisting, I think it would be good to pivot to one of those choices.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you. Thank you, Robin.
>>Tom Harris: Let's give it one more shot? How's this?
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Oh, we hear you now, Tom.
>>Nate Blair: It's much better, Tom.
>>Robin Burton: [inaudible] Sounds good.
>>Tom Harris: So sorry everyone.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank to the participants for patience. Technical difficulties are sometimes inevitable.
>>Tom Harris: I apologize. Yeah, and we'll scoot over this slide very quickly. But we're just illustrating here the inputs to the model, which you can see are the existing system representation, the plan deployments and retirements currently on the books, the distributed energy resource capacities that Nate spoke about, and the future technology options for the system. These include generators, transmission, storage, and then the attributes of those technologies, such as efficiency, their resource potential, the fuel mix, and so forth. The output of the model is the least-cost system that meets the load, respecting all requirements and limits. And those outputs, in more detail, are the list of optimized output capacity: asset capacities, the transmission and the storage capacities, the overall investment costs, the operational costs, and so forth. Next slide, please.
Preliminary Findings from Scenario Modeling
There are two findings of particular interest. First, in the bullets below, in the limited land scenario, there is not adequate land for cost-optimal deployment of utility scale, wind, and solar, that is, if no agricultural land is used. But as Nate said, that doesn't mean that there is not adequate resource around the island, including offshore wind and so forth.
The second bullet, the system is currently significantly resource inadequate and is lacking, actually, a few hundred megawatts of firm capacity in order to be—in order to be adequate, in terms of resilience and reliability. Next slide, please.
Accelerated Deployment
And there are some corollaries to these findings. If you look at the third bullet on this slide, first, the models recommend immediate buildout of utility-scale solar and wind and storage. Because under current assumptions, which we'll be talking about with PREPA and LUMA as a next step in our analysis, this reduces the overall cost of operating the system. As you see in bullet four, there is immediate deployment of wind, solar, and storage, which provides reliability, stability, and resilience benefits.
And back to Bullet 1, in general, building building-level PV and storage can provide building-level resilience. So accelerating the deployment of these technologies can increase local reliability and resilience. And then in bullet two, virtual power plants, which allow the grid operator to use local storage to support the larger system, can provide reliability across the system and, in later years, can mitigate duplication of distributed scale and utility scale resources. Next slide, please.
Investment Planning
And then some findings specific to Puerto Rico's plan procurements and goals mandated by Act 17. In the first bullet, we see that the planned Tranche 1 deployments of PV and storage will help address, but be inadequate for the immediate need for generation capacity on the system. Hence the need for rapid deployment of resources.
Furthermore, bullet two, the planned Tranches are inadequate to meet the 40% reliable, renewable portfolio standard requirement of Act 17 by 2025. And I think there was a question to that effect. In general, wind is expected to be more cost effective and more energy productive per unit of capacity than solar. However, the requirements do not discriminate between wind and solar. And the current proposals are mostly for solar. It would provide clarity and support for the Act 17 requirements if the Tranche requirements could be specified in units of expected electricity production, rather than nameplate capacity.
And then, finally, the investment decisions for both the bulk power and the policy for distributed energy resources should be coordinated and informed by long-term planning. Because the rapid deployment of utility scale technologies needed for economic operation and reliability could lead to at least partially stranded assets if distributed resources are adopted more slowly but eventually dominate the energy supply. Next slide, please.
And at this point, I'll pass the presentation to Marcelo. Thank you very much.
Bulk Power System Analysis
>>Marcelo Elizondo: Hello. Hello, everyone. This is Marcelo Elizondo. I am from the Pacific Northwest National Lab. I lead the team here that mainly concentrates on bulk power system resilience and reliability analysis. And we also, of course, collaborate with our other partners here, especially for NREL and also Oak Ridge National Lab and Sandia.
Transmission Resilience Analysis
So then, in the next slide, I'm going to present some of the main tools that we have used for this analysis. And the analysis is about finding out the impact of—especially of hurricanes, when we increase the renewable penetrations in Puerto Rico. And we have used a tool called electrical grid resilience and assessment system that is to estimate the probability of failure of the infrastructure when hurricanes come.
We generate many sequences of failures due to hurricane using data from the National Hurricane Center. And then we after that, we used two grid utility grid simulators to analyze the impact on the grid. With one of them, the dynamic contingency analysis tool, we estimate the cascading failure of the system when many of the elements fail. And another tool, the recovery simulator and analysis, if we estimate the time and effort to recover the system.
And so with this, we can evaluate different options of generation. So what we did for the 1-year finding, we took the current system and compare it to one of the future systems that was generated by a capacity expansion as—and also as Tom mentioned before. Then in the next slide, you will see some of the preliminary findings of this analysis.
Preliminary Findings of Impact Analysis
So when we compared one of the future system, the future system has a smaller renewable resources spread across several locations in the system. And that system recovers faster than the current system. Where the current system, as we know, it has a large power plant concentrated in a few locations. So when we have more generation available, we can recover the system faster.
And we also, in that analysis, we identified the last 10% of substations that can be recovered, which is shown in the figure there with the stars. And these last 10% of substations tend to be in the mountainous and rural regions. And some very important aspect is also the black star capabilities of the renewables. That if you have a black star capability in many of these renewable generators or energy storage, you can have recover the system faster up to three times faster than if you only have very limited black star capability in the system. So the next slide also expands on grid updates and storage findings.
Grid Upgrades and Storage
So for the transmission system, we found that there will be upgrades will be needed, especially for offshore wind and in the future to accommodate utility-size generation. Then for distribution feeders, upgrades are needed to accommodate the increase on distributed solar generation, distributed storage, as well as electric vehicle adoption. Then we also found that utility-scale battery energy storage is very important. And it can be very important now, as we know.
So the bulk power system reliability and resilience can be improved with energy storage if it is deployed now. We can assist on the recovery of after a hurricane and also in normal operation to improve the reliability of the systems. As well, we found that also utilizing controllability and protection improvements of inverter-based generator is a very important topic. And things like battery with grid-forming capabilities can be important. Now, the next slide shows the sum of additional findings, in terms of grid modernization.
So implementation of real-time measurement system, high-resolution measurement system is very important now, as well. That can facilitate activities like model validation that end up on increasing situational awareness and supporting activities like a model validation that can result in enhance generator models, for example, that those, in turn, improve the reliability of the system.
Additionally, we consider that high fidelity models, such as those in programs like electromagnetic simulators, can be very important to help a great planners gain confidence when deploying renewables, especially because the renewables have an energy conversion system that is relatively new for us engineers. So these type of tools are very important.
And in the slide, you can also see a figure that shows a comparison when you have black-start capability in all generators in one side against a system with limited black-start capability in only two power plants. And we can see the difference in the recovery time, where one of them can be up to three times faster, as I mentioned before. And yes, so with this, we can go to the next slide. And I think we go back to Charlotte on this.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Yes, thank you, Marcelo. And so that concludes the portion of hearing about the key updates from PR100, up to this point. And we're going to begin to transition into the second half of today's conversation, which is really—we added into today based on one of the most common questions that has come up throughout this process, which is after the study, what happens? How do we implement this?
And so we're going to move into a panel conversation about implementation. And before we do that, we want you to go to the link that's going to be shared here in the chat, another Poll EV link. This is going to help us form a word cloud.
Poll Question #3
And what we want to know is what organizations, or entities, who are those key stakeholders that you think need to be involved in implementing Puerto Rico's energy transition? There's no right or wrong answers here. We just want to know, from you, who you think needs to be at that table? If we were building that implementation table, who should be there to be a part of that process and conversation? And so the way the word cloud works is it's going to move things higher. We'll see what—the more you see a word, the more it's going to—the larger it's going to be there. But we want you to, again, this is a list we're going to be able to use, but we want you to see what other people and who other people think should be at that table. If you have any technical issues with the poll, feel free to use the chat here. But we do want to hear this from you.
I see communities. I see LUMA. I see the government. Mayaguez, I think we've got Mayaguez here working with us. The University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez was mentioned earlier. The cooperatives, co-ops, PREPA, environmental groups. And then in the chat I'm seeing [Language other than English spoken] farmers.
So it's a wide variety and a diversity of different stakeholders. Continue to please to share them, but I do want to move us forward then to that conversation with some of the people who are some of the folks leading this conversation around implementation here in Puerto Rico.
Implementation Discussion Panel
And so we're going to hear from this panel, which is going to be moderated by Agustín Carbó, who is the new Department of Energy Director of the Puerto Rico Grid Modernization and Recovery Team. We are also, as a part of this panel, we're going to bring back the Department of Energy Secretary, Secretary Jennifer Granholm, our FEMA administrator, Deanne Criswell. And from Puerto Rico, Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi. So welcome, everyone. If you can turn your cameras on and join us here in this conversation. They begin to join us. And I'm going to pass the microphone over to Agustín Carbó.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you, Charlotte. And hello, everyone. My name is Agustín Carbó and I have the honor of serving as the Department of Energy Director for Puerto Rico Modernization and Recovery Team. In this role, our team is working closely with other federal agencies and government leadership in Puerto Rico to quickly deploy projects that will provide Puerto Rico with clean, reliable, and affordable power.
Part of the job is to provide technical assistance and subject matter expertise to inform investments and decision making. PR100 is a key example of this, and we could not be more excited to be sharing these results. Even though we are at the halfway point, you just learned about some important findings and actions that can be taken now to get us closer to the 100% goal.
Today, we have asked DOE Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, Puerto Rico's Governor, Pedro Pierluisi, and the Administrator of FEMA, Deanne Criswell, to join us in this panel to answer some of the questions that you all provided through the registration form and discuss this initial findings and how they are and will be implemented. So let me start with Governor Pierluisi. [Language other than English spoken]
>>Pedro Pierluisi: [Language other than English spoken]
>>Agustín Carbó: Governor, the results you just saw are the product of the nation's best modeling and analysis capabilities and the guidance of our advisory group with over 100 members representing a broad set of stakeholders in Puerto Rico. We have heard concerns that time is of the essence for the implementation of these findings to ensure that the best PR100 scenarios become a reality. So let me ask you, how committed are you to implementing the pathways to 100% renewable energy?
>>Pedro Pierluisi: My commitment to the transformation of Puerto Rico's energy system is unwavering. In fact, my administration's goals and ongoing work of the PR100 team are aligned. And I have taken concrete steps to ensure that our people have access to clean, resilient, and distributed electricity in Puerto Rico. I must highlight the support the federal government has provided, particularly Energy Secretary Granholm, to help us reach our goals.
The level of expertise we have amassed from all resources, working with PR100, including the six national laboratories, which are collaborating, as well as so many community stakeholders, has been essential to guarantee our success. This participative process is a vital part of the adjustments and updates to our public policies and to Puerto Rico's Integrated Resource Plan. It is clear that the results of the PR100 study will bring great value to the revision process of our IRP.
It is important to highlight the progress that we have achieved towards our goal of reaching 100% renewables, even as we acknowledge implementation delays before my administration, including those caused by the pandemic, which presented the unique challenges in this and other areas. For example, in the past 2 years, over 45,000 rooftop solar systems have been interconnected into our electric grid, which is more than had been done in the previous 10 years.
We have provided grants and incentives for distributed energy generation for low-income households and small businesses with CDBG on our part funds. We have accelerated the contracting of 18 utility-scaled projects of renewable energy to be integrated into our grid. And several of them are already in construction or in the pre-construction phase. And we just finished the procurement process and are in the final stages of evaluation on the next round of renewable energy projects that will bring an additional 1,000 mega of generation and 500 mega of storage to the grid.
We, furthermore, we secured assistance from FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in coordination with my administration and the Department of Energy, to bring in temporary generation and carry out key improvements to our grid and existing generation plants, which will provide the necessary stability in our energy system to fast-track the grid restoration as well as the construction and installation of utility-scale projects, microgrids, and additional rooftop systems.
I am confident and committed to ensuring that the advancement of our renewable targets will be exponential in the next 2 years.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you, Governor Pierluisi. My second question goes to Administrator Criswell. How are you, Administrator?
>>Deanne Criswell: I'm good, Agustín, thank you.
>>Agustín Carbó: Administrator, as we saw in the results we're just presented, our models show that significant additional generation capacity is needed immediately on the scale of hundreds of megawatts to ensure the reliability of our system. How is your administration addressing these generation shortfalls, while transitioning to renewable resources?
>>Deanne Criswell: Yeah. Thank you for the question, Agustín. And Governor Pierluisi, it's good to see you again. Always appreciate your partnership. And Secretary Granholm, also again, thanks for your partnership in these efforts.
The results that the study show really also align with what we saw play out after Hurricane Fiona. And that is, without additional capacity to help compensate the impacts of Fiona to the generation system, it resulted in the loss of power to the entire island. And what this did is it created a life and safety risk for Puerto Ricans. So even though power was restored, that lack of capacity, it created a sustained risk of power outages following Hurricane Fiona.
So that's why, before Puerto Rico can move to 100% renewable energy, the existing power system must be stable. And that's why, again, after Hurricane Fiona, in support of Governor Pierluisi and the Government of Puerto Rico, FEMA worked with our federal partners to help create the Puerto Rico Power System Stabilization Task Force. I know that's a mouthful there, but I'd like to thank our partners from the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency for joining us in this effort.
What the task force did is it focused on strategies to help maintain enough power and reserve capacity to meet the needs across Puerto Rico. This effort, it also allowed for the required maintenance and repairs to be conducted simultaneously. We had one goal, and that was to consistently provide power to the people of Puerto Rico without significant disruption.
But from the beginning of this effort, I also made clear that these stabilization strategies, they needed to align with the long term PR100 goals. Our intention was to make sure that we allowed Puerto Rico's energy authorities to have enough flexibility in the system that their focus could easily shift from emergency repairs to developing a renewable system for the future. The coming months, I think that we can look forward to seeing some real progress made on the priority repairs to the power system.
But it's also very important to remember that any of the generation work that FEMA adds to the system is strictly temporary. It is only intended to be in place long enough to allow emergency repairs to be made to the current system. So as we prepare for the 2023 hurricane season, it's partnerships like this task force that are going to provide for a more reliable system. Thanks.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you, Administrator. The next question goes to Secretary Granholm. Madam Secretary, good afternoon.
>>Jennifer Granholm: Good afternoon.
>>Agustín Carbó: Some of our webinar participants who submitted questions through the registration form would like to know if there has been any coordination with relevant stakeholders in the PR100 study?
>>Jennifer Granholm: Yeah, for sure. I mean, leading into this, of course, that poll was really significant. Thanks, Agustín for the question. And I do want to say thank you to Governor Pierluisi and Administrator Criswell. We are all working on improving systems and working together and we're all rowing in the same direction now.
So I'm excited about breakthroughs that are happening and will continue to happen with being able to rebuild as well as build a whole new distributed system. Thanks to those who raised this question. I just—we approach this work with the very keen understanding that the only way that this transition is going to succeed is if there are paths forward that work for Puerto Rico and for its residents. There's no sense in putting together a road map that Puerto Ricans can't or won't buy into.
And so our teams really set out from the very beginning to make this study reflective of community experience. And to do that, we needed extensive—and still need—ongoing input from people who know the challenges and who know the opportunities. We formed a steering committee, for example, that includes key government officials and stakeholders from PREPA, LUMA, FEMA, HUD, Core 3, Vivienda, the Governor's Office, so that they can help direct and shape the study to be responsive to the ongoing recovery activities and the urgent priorities.
We also assembled this advisory group of nearly 100 local experts that represent this broad range of perspectives, from academia, to community leaders, to environmental advocates, retail and manufacturing groups, legal minds, folks in finance, and more. And so the government groups and the community side have worked together to really give us invaluable input as we develop and we analyze these scenarios that achieve a full transition to renewables by 2050, while still improving reliability and resilience and energy justice and affordability, all of those things.
But I will say, our stakeholder engagement goes beyond the steering committee, and beyond the advisory group. Because we have developed an online platform to give members of the public a way to track project updates from DOE and the national labs, and to send us feedback and ideas. We're going to be back on the ground in Puerto Rico, as I mentioned, next week, to kick off the PR100, what will I call it, a road show?
We want to take it to all corners of the island. And so we're going to start that next week. We're going directly into Puerto Rican communities to spread the word about PR100 to gather insights and to share insights from the findings of the study, to make sure, really, that we're reflecting the—because Puerto Rico is diverse. And we want to reflect the unique needs and priorities of the different communities across Puerto Rico. So this first round is going to involve visits to four communities. And there will be more to come over regular trips that we're planning throughout the rest of this year.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you Madam Secretary. And we look forward to have you here in Puerto Rico next week. The next question is for all panelists. In our registration form, we received many questions surrounding the value of distributed renewable resources, such as rooftop solar, storage, and microgrids, and what actions both the federal and Puerto Rico government are undertaking to make sure this systems play a big role in the transformation of the energy system.
These are no longer simply anecdotes from citizens who have been able to keep power on and provide life-saving services during storms and long-term outages. The initial resilience analysis in PR100 found that a model system of smaller renewable resources spread across the bulk electric grid tends to recover power faster than the current system, which consists of fewer and larger power plants. I would like to ask each panelist to share a little bit about what is being done under your jurisdiction to advance the deployment of distributed renewable resources? So I'm going to start with Governor Pierluisi.
>>Pedro Pierluisi: Thank you. The transformation of our energy system is geared to do just that. Fund and incentivize distributed energy systems and microgrids throughout the island of Puerto Rico, while we update our island's current centralized system into a modern, interconnected one that better serves the needs of our people and our businesses.
Our antiquated system developed over the last 100 years helped provide electricity to the people of Puerto Rico around our island and enabled the development of industries and important economic sectors, such as manufacturing. Now, with up-to-date technology, access to individual and collective distributed generation systems, electric vehicles, and energy storage capacity, our system is quickly changing towards what will be a totally different system with multiple generation sources.
We now have close to 70,000 prosumers, which are interacting with our grid as energy producers and consumers, as part of the net metering program we have on the island. There are also various distributed projects that are already providing clean energy all around the island. In the short-term and medium-term, we are supporting sectors that do not yet have access to distributed generation alternatives, which includes low-income households and small businesses.
Our current efforts to provide resiliency and energy independence include our [Language other than English spoken] program, which provides grants for small businesses to acquire solar systems and batteries for their critical load needs. We have already awarded incentives for 888 small businesses across Puerto Rico, with an allocation of $20 million from our [Language other than English spoken]. Currently, about 400 small businesses have completed their renewable projects since the award. And we continue to support the others to ensure timely completion.
Furthermore, my administration has already identified an additional $30 million in CDBG funds to allocate to this program, which will impact over 1,000 more small businesses. Our CDBG community and water resiliency installation program has allocated $300 million for the installation of solar systems, batteries, and water cisterns to the beneficiaries of the R3 housing renovation program. This funding will allow over 10,000 households to have access to distributed energy and storage.
Over 500 of this systems have already been completed. And we recently integrated additional approved contractors to accelerate the process. Through the CDBG mid-allocation, we have devoted $500 million to expand our reach for providing renewable energy systems and batteries for low- to medium-income families, which should help impact over 20,000 additional households. The application process for this program will begin in the next few months.
In addition, Congress just appropriated $1 billion to increase Puerto Rico's energy resilience, which in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, we will also work to deploy for the installation of renewable energy systems and storage to low-income and disabled residents throughout the island. Likewise, we have allocated $1.3 billion from the CDBGR funds—actually, from the CDBG mid-funds—to develop microgrid projects, which are essential to maximize the use of clean energy assets and enhance their resilience at a larger level.
As the first project under this program, we are developing a microgrid for Centro Medico, our main medical facility on the island. For this project, a dedicated team, assisted by the DOE, is currently working to have the requests for proposals ready during the next few weeks. Other additional microgrids that we are identifying across Puerto Rico will be able to receive up to 40% of the project costs from this funding.
Our main objective is to maximize the clean and reliable energy assets that we have and that are currently being developed to serve our communities during any event. We are at a critical juncture in the transformation of our energy system, for which we have great momentum right now. I am confident that in the months and years ahead, our shared goals, including the PR100 recommendations, will be underway. And the progress will be felt by all in the form of equitable access to reliable energy.
>>Agustín Carbó: [Language other than English spoken]. Now, back to Madam Secretary. Same questions to you.
>>Jennifer Granholm: And the question is about what are we doing about distributed generation resources, so…
>>Agustín Carbó: Correct.
>>Jennifer Granholm: We, DOE obviously, we believe that distributed renewable solutions are just a critical piece of the resilience puzzle. I've heard through our advisory group from communities, like Casa Pueblo, that have set up solar and storage systems after Hurricane Maria. And those systems avoided catastrophe when Hurricane Fiona hit. So we know the systems work. We know their value.
And the point is, as you just suggested, Agustín, is that we have to ensure that these are not just one-offs, just anecdotes, but that we are deploying these at scale. And to do that, we've got to tackle the upfront costs. And so, as Governor Pierluisi said, the great news is that, thanks to the spending package that President Biden signed in December, our Grid Deployment Office now has $1 billion for activities, like rooftop solar, that will improve resilience for Puerto Rico's electric grid.
And those activities that will, include things like providing grants to low- and moderate-income households for buying and installing distributed renewable solutions, like rooftop solar and storage. So we've got—we now—we, DOE, have some financial skin in the game. We're going to go to work. We're going to work quickly to design and implement this program with input from Puerto Rican communities.
And at the same time, our labs are the best in the world, when it comes to technical assistance. And Puerto Rico, PR100 is elevating what they can offer. For example, the study that you just heard about is giving us a better understanding of where distributed resources will offer the biggest boost for resiliency, particularly, for Puerto Rico's most vulnerable populations. And that study is also going to show us what kind of grid improvements would allow for the safe integration of those new systems.
And we're going to be sharing all of that with PREPA and with LUMA, who can then incorporate it into their ongoing efforts. And of course, at the same time, we've been closely collaborating with Vivienda, because they are designing that $1.3 billion—separate $1.3 billion—program that's focused on using those microgrids and community solar to enhance resilience and reliability. Super excited about Centro Médico, for example.
So all told, we are ready and willing and able and eager to work with communities and give them the tools and the knowledge to design and deploy systems that fit their needs.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you, Madam Secretary. And last but not least, Administrator Criswell, what is FEMA doing to advance the deployment of distributed renewable sources in Puerto Rico?
>>Deanne Criswell: Now, I think we've just heard some really great activity that's happening already. And I would say, just to start, that our principal objective is to make sure that we're supporting the Government of Puerto Rico's priorities. And that we do that in partnership.
And so along with PREPA, and LUMA, and Core 3, we're maintaining the goal of ensuring that the projects that we are working on continue to move forward, with a shared vision, to help restore critical utility systems, but at the same time, building capacity in Puerto Rico in a manner that is going to be resilient against the impacts of the future disasters that we can expect to see.
You know, as part of this, FEMA approved the largest obligation of public assistance funding in our history. And this was a federal share of over $9.4 billion in funds to PREPA to help rebuild the island's energy grid.
And while this funding, it's there to cover the repairs to the facilities that were damaged by Hurricane Maria, it also allows for those repairs to be done in a way that is more resilient and helps Puerto Rico reach their PR100 goals. So we're going to continue to offer technical assistance to try to help and identify any feasible effective renewable energy products that can be included in this funding. We also consider the addition of renewable energy activities to projects under our hazard mitigation grant program, such as PREPA's project for the [Language other than English spoken] Generation Plant 1 as well as the simple-cycle gas turbines.
So these are great examples of how the funding that we have available to help rebuild can also be used to meet these goals. And so I'm confident that the collaboration between FEMA, our federal partners, but most importantly, with the Government of Puerto Rico is going to continue playing a key role in successfully completing these recovery efforts and making Puerto Rico more resilient.
>>Agustín Carbó: Thank you, Administrator. Now take it to Charlotte.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Thank you. Thank you to all of our panelists. Secretary Granholm, Administrator Criswell, Governor Pierluisi. And thank you, Agustín, for facilitating that conversation. It is really great to begin having these conversations about implementation, which I think are so important to this PR100 process.
So with this, I am looking at the time. We are a little bit over our originally allotted time here. And so I'm going to move us back to our slides and I'm going to jump ahead to our wrap-up slides because we want to make sure you know how to stay engaged and how to continue to receive information and contact those who are working on the PR100.
Contact Us
[Text on screen: Join Mobilize online community to connect with PR100 team: https://pr-energy.mobilize.io/registrations/groups/49360; Sign up for updates: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOEGDO/subscribers/new; For questions, contact: prprojects@nrel.gov]
Earlier, Secretary Granholm mentioned the Mobilize online community as one way to continue staying in touch. There is a section of this platform, which is for the general public to be able to participate, share information, ask questions. So if you are not already part of Mobilize, please join. You can also sign up for updates on the website that—and I think the link was shared earlier in the chat as well. Maybe we can share that link again on how to sign up for updates.
And you can also email your questions directly to PR projects at nrel.gov. We jump to the next slide, we also have additional resources.
Additional Resources
So many people were asking, where do we get more information? Where can we watch this? Are these slides going to be available? The answer is yes. And so if you—when we share this out, it's going to have links for you to all of the different places online where you can access this information and be able to continue, again, participating, as well as reading the full report. It was referenced multiple times, in the full report, in the full report. Today was a summary of that 1- year update report. And so we want to make sure that you have access to the full version of that, and it is available to the public online.
And so we're going to be sharing those out with anyone who registered today. So to whatever email that you had. We have received tons of questions and, Robin, if you could join me for a minute because I want to at least—people are asking what's going to happen to our questions now that we have run out of time? And so how will we be able to follow up with the—I think there's over 60 questions in the Q&A, plus many that came in through the chat. So what would be our process, then, for the lab team being able to follow up on some of these?
>>Robin Burton: Yeah. Thanks, Charlotte. We really appreciate all the questions and comments that have been coming in throughout. And we will provide written responses to the questions. So please know that we hear all of the questions you're asking and we will follow up with webinar participants with written responses to those questions. Thanks again for participating.
>>Charlotte Gossett Navarro: Great. So if you registered, you're going to, then, receive that information in the future after the teams have had the time to sit and review and summarize that and then send them out to you. These slides as well. So the links that you're seeing on the page right now, you will be getting them in your email to where—the email that you used to register for today.
If we go to our last slide, it is really just a thank you to all of you. We had hundreds of participants on today. We hope each time that this group grows because we want more and more people to engage in PR100. We know that it takes time away from your everyday schedule to join this today. And so much appreciation to you for taking the time to participate, for your feedback, and for your questions. Please keep sending them. Use that information on the contact us, and do contact us so that we can engage with you. Thank you, everyone.
>>Robin Burton: Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today.
[End of webinar]
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