Cheap Solar Power for Puerto Rican Farmers

My name is Nancy, and I’m fundraising to help my friends Alexis Zeigler and Debbie Piesen of Living Energy Lights return to Puerto Rico this winter to install solar power systems for farm families lacking grid access.

Frequent blackouts mean Puerto Ricans need reliable power for a variety of reasons – to keep refrigerated food and medications from spoiling, to keep fans and air conditioners going for those in fragile health, to run water pumps to irrigate crops. You can’t farm without reliable energy, and Puerto Rico needs more farms: due to U.S. policies that have favored manufacturing, Puerto Rico went from growing most of its own food in the 1940’s to importing 85% of it currently.

After Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans had solar power systems installed, often going into debt to pay for them. But these systems depend on large, expensive battery sets that decline in performance after just five to seven years, leaving those who can’t afford to replace them in the dark once again. It costs $30,000 to provide a household with a conventional system, consisting of solar panels, inverters and batteries. But it only costs $3,500 to set up a family with a solar kit based on Zeigler’s design, which reduces battery size by 90%. The kits to be installed in Puerto Rico have the potential not only to help farm families there, but also to serve as a model that could spread to help the 770 million people worldwide who have no access to electricity.

At Living Energy Farm, the fossil fuel-free farm that Zeigler and Piesen founded in central Virginia in 2010, Zeigler discovered that he could get cheap, reliable energy from simple systems that send power directly from solar panels to multiple tools and appliances that run on direct current. Water pumps, grain mills, shop tools, sewing machines, etc. can be run simultaneously during the day (the panels collect energy even on cloudy days). At night, durable nickel-iron batteries can be used to provide lighting.

Zeigler and Piesen have shared their Direct Drive DC Microgrid technology with people in the Hopi and Navajo Nations, in Jamaica, and, most recently, in Puerto Rico. In August 2022, twenty Puerto Rican activists, farmers and electricians attended a two-week training at Living Energy Farm. In the winter of 2022, Zeigler, Piesen and others from their farm visited Puerto Rico and, through a partnership with two local grassroots organizations, installed their systems in six homes and three community centers. A second delegation from Puerto Rico will visit Virginia for training this August. (For more information, see: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/decolonizing-puerto-rico-through-solar-power/)

Zeigler and Piesen hope that, with enough Direct Drive DC systems up and running in Puerto Rico, solar installers there will switch from expensive, fallible AC systems to their model. Once the cheaper systems are used widely in Puerto Rico, other countries may take notice, and the technology can spread to the places that need it most – villages with no grid access, where the ability to run a communal refrigerator, shop tools and a water pump – as well as run lighting at night – could mean a huge leap forward.

Living Energy Lights’ operating budget in 2022 was $50,000. (I find it incredible that a community of six adults and two children has been able to accomplish so much with so little money.) Several Puerto Rican organizations are trying to raise funds to install Direct Drive DC Microgrids for ten families this winter. Living Energy Lights is hoping to raise enough funds to install systems for five additional families.

Thank you for considering donating. Please forward this to anyone you know who is worried about climate change and wants to empower poor people. Let’s end energy poverty!