“I wish we never had to have this proof point,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. But she said the hurricanes have shown that renewables paired with battery storage are a reliable form of energy.
It “is not just a theory, but it actually is providing power to people in otherwise darkened areas,” Hopper added.
The two storms knocked out power to 2.7 million customers in Florida as well as the entire island of Puerto Rico, which has more than 3 million residents. (Nearly 12,000 power customers in the state and about 9,000 on the island remained without power as of Sunday night.) Still, much of the grid in both places bounced back faster than it had after some past hurricanes, in part because of efforts in Florida to harden power networks by burying power lines and replacing wooden poles with steel or concrete.
But solar power was…