For the first time, in 2023, over 5% of the energy transported by Puerto Rico’s power grid was generated by clean sources, an increase mainly driven by residential generation systems under the Net Metering Program, faced with stalled development of large-scale renewable projects.

However, this percentage could significantly underestimate the total renewable energy that the island´s households and businesses currently use, since it only includes the production of net-metering customers exported to the grid and not the energy consumed at the point of generation.

“At the end of the day, distributed generation, if available and used as virtual power plants, replaces any solar farm. If what you’re asking me is whether it’s possible to consider distributed generation as part of the requirements of this compliance (with legal renewable energy goals), we have to look at it from a different point of view, Who can it be attributed to? But without a doubt, we are moving forward with the integration of renewable energy, whether at the distributed generation level or the domestic level,” said the president of the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB), Edison Avilés Deliz, in an interview with El Nuevo Día.

An analysis of the reports submitted to the PREB by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and LUMA Energy over the past four years shows that in 2023, of the 16,654-gigawatt hours (GWh) of consumption recorded, 838.3, or 5.03 %, was produced with renewable energy sources. Of this total clean production, 385.4 GWh was injected into the grid by the large generators that sell PREPA power, while 452.9 GWh came from interconnected “prosumers” through net metering.

According to LUMA, the period between April and June 2023 marked the first quarter when prosumers contribution (127.7 GWh) was higher than that of the large producers (98.2 GWh), a trend that would continue until the end of 2023 and is expected to increase in 2024. Over the whole year, net metering customers contributed 2.72 % of the energy, compared to 2.32 % for large renewable energy generators.

Since 2020, when the PREB began requiring quarterly net metering reports, clean energy flow has increased, even as large-scale generation declined from 452.3 GWh in 2021 to 385.4 GWh in 2023. In 2020, the system recorded 3.27 % renewable energy, followed by 3.77 % in 2021, 4.37 % in 2022, and 5.03 % last year.

However, the percentage is still far from the Energy Public Policy Act’s 20 % goal for 2022, which will double to 40 % by 2025.

A 2022 report, a collaboration between the Casa Pueblo organization, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Campus, and Chicago-based firm West Monroe, warned that the percentage of energy generated in households is significantly higher than what net metering systems recorded.

Using data from January 2022 as an example - when only 42,000 customers were connected to net metering, compared to the 110,000 by the end of 2023 - the study estimated that exports totaled 45% of residential production, while the rest was for personal consumption.

By December 2023, the 110,000 net-metering systems could generate 765 megawatts (MW), about one-third of the demand during solar irradiance periods and three times the 253 MW capacity of utility-scale renewable energy producers.

Javier Rúa Jovet, Public Policy Director of the Asociación de Energía Solar y Almacenamiento de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Solar Energy and Storage Association), who recently criticized the Oversight Board for seeking to reduce the net metering credit granted to prosumers, estimated that Puerto Rico’s renewable energy portfolio should be around 12 % when combining utility-scale and distributed clean generation.

“Storage batteries are not included (in this calculation),” added Rúa Jovet, who highlighted that to achieve the 100 % renewable energy goal set by 2050, about 10,000 MW of clean generation will be needed, along with an enormous capacity to store that production.

Since 2020, when the current version of the Integrated Resource Plan was approved, PREPA and PREB have been unable to advance negotiations for six rounds of bids to acquire 3,750 MW of generation capacity and 1,500 MW of storage. Projects in the first round were to be negotiated by 2023, and by the end of 2025, 600 MW of solar PV and 200 MW of batteries are expected to be added.