With Puerto Rico’s power grid and telecommunications network completely knocked off by hurricane Maria, government and private organizations have been busy deploying short-term solutions to get the island back on its feet and planning for long-term solutions such as replacing it’s aging, expensive, fossil-fuel-powered power grid with a modern system optimized for a tropical island like Puerto Rico. Trump administration not withstanding.
Here is a partial list of efforts around the island to rebuild its infrastructure.
Electricity and Tesla
Tesla, a company with 33,000 employees, $7B in revenues and a pioneer in auto, space, solar energy and battery technologies, with a track record of solar system installations powering entire islands is going to Puerto Rico with real solutions, donations, small pilot projects, with visions of modernizing the entire electrical grid using solar energy.
The facility installed at Hospital del Niño will provide power, with a combination of solar cells and Tesla’s Powerpack commercial energy storage batteries. techcrunch.com/…
Tesla has also been shipping its home Powerwall battery storage units to the island, and Musk has made a personal donation of $250K to support relief efforts.
See earlier diary www.dailykos.com/… on the state of Puerto Rico's crippled power generation systems and distribution grid and some proposed long-term solutions using economical green energy and hurricane resistant designs.
Telecommunications and Google
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, with over 75,000 employees and $90B in annual revenues, has already deployed two balloon based telecommunications systems (floating cellular base stations), with more on the way, to provide wireless voice and Internet services to Puerto Rico. arstechnica.com/...
Alastair Westgarth, head of Project Loon, writes —
“Working with AT&T, Project Loon is now supporting basic communication and internet activities like sending text messages and accessing information online for some people with LTE enabled phones. This is the first time we have used our new machine learning powered algorithms to keep balloons clustered over Puerto Rico, so we’re still learning how best to do this. ”
With some nifty software and real-time weather updates, the balloons can find and sail on wind currents, travel around the world and hover over a small area. Air is pumped in and out to change altitude and find the right currents.
Here is a video on the technology from Project Loon. Some more info at the project loon website at https://x.company/loon/. (DK does not recognize this URL which ends with .company).
www.flightradar24.com/… has real-time tracking of the balloons with call signs HBAL199 and HBAL237. Pretty cool.
Food and Chef José Andrés
Chef José Andrés has served Nearly 1.5 Million Meals To Hungry Puerto Ricans — www.npr.org/…
Water and Unions
The American Federation of Teachers, and other groups, including Operation Blessing International and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have begun raising money to provide at least 100,000 individual water filtration systems and 50 large-capacity clean water devices for schools and community centers. www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Power Line Repair and the Grifters
On the other hand, Whitefish Energy, a small two-year old company with two full-time employees and annual revenues of $1M, just won a $300M contract to repair Puerto Rico’s power lines. Perhaps, had something to do with its connections to the GOP power structure. And the Republican penchant to turn every crisis into profits, damn the people and damn the tax-payers. See “Two-man company that got $300 million Puerto Rico contract tied to Trump officials, GOP donors” at www.dailykos.com/… for some more details.
Calls for greater transparency by San Juan’s mayor resulted in threats to stop work by the company. This is how Republicans operate.
The mayor has called for the contract to be voided. thehill.com/. The governor of Puerto Rico is has requested an audit. thehill.com/...
Acts of Heroism by the People
There are countless stories of our brothers and sisters in PR making selfless heroic efforts to help one another.
Meanwhile, our unPresident grades himself for a job not done.
Alejandro was Governor of PR from 2013 to 2016.
Organizations from around the world are raising funds for PR.
Remarks
One month after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, about 25 percent of its 3.4 million citizens lack clean water and 80 percent still live without electricity. www.newsweek.com/…
We wish our government, with our tax-dollars, would do more. But, it is heartening to see the the better angels among our private sector and social organizations lend an honest hand to the rebuilding effort in PR.
This country was made by the hard-work and brilliance of the its people — from factory workers to engineers, from teachers to researchers, from students to professors, from nurses to doctors, from activists to artists — from all around the world, across all genders and races. Let’s not let the current crop of grifters and swamp-critters destroy decades of progress in our country.
We can do our part through donations — see www.dailykos.com/… and www.dailykos.com/… for links to charities and relief organizations working for PR.
Further Reading
- A New Green Power Grid For Puerto Rico? — www.dailykos.com/…. Contains info on proposed long-term solutions for PR using economical green energy.
- Project Loon website — https://x.company/loon/
- Project Loon wiki — en.wikipedia.org/...
- Balloon navigation breakthrough helps extend cell service in Puerto Rico — arstechnica.com/…
- Tesla makes quick work of Puerto Rico hospital solar power relief project — techcrunch.com/…
- Two-man company that got $300 million Puerto Rico contract tied to Trump officials, GOP donors — www.dailykos.com/…