Puerto Rico is only a thousand miles off the coast of Miami, but as late as 2009 the U.S. mainland felt a million miles away in terms of solar industry regulations.
The U.S. territory’s government had enacted what amounted to an incredible 75% investment tax credit for solar, but treasury officials, who are better with money than modules, were responsible for administering project approvals.
“Imagine their lack of knowledge in validating applications,” said Alexis Miranda, founder of Gvelop (No. 214 on the 2016 Top Solar Contractors list). “They just saw numbers and proceeded to approve everything.”
In some cases, crews without any training were installing projects, Miranda said. It was about this time when Miranda (a Puerto Rico native) returned from Chicago, where he had been working as an engineer and was introduced to renewable energy.
Inspired, he returned to college and earned a master’s degree in power systems engineering. He then went to work at the Puerto Rico State Energy Office and helped develop many of the regulations that govern the island’s solar industry today, based on rules from places like California, Massachusetts and Oregon.
“They were years ahead of us,” Miranda said. But, eventually, regulations emphasizing building codes and certifications were in place. “From that moment on, it has been improving by the minute, and the challenges today relate to the challenges many other jurisdictions face.”
Taking advantage of a renewed market, Miranda founded Gvelop with business partner Jan Maduro in 2011. The company has grown to 13 employees with 10 MW of solar on the books—2.5 MW of that installed in 2015.
The Puerto Rican solar market is growing, too, fueled by plentiful sunshine and high electricity rates—close to double those in the continental United States for commercial and industrial applications. From July 2012 to April 2015, distributed solar capacity increased by a factor of nine in Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“It has been a long, long road for us, facing a lot of challenges as an emerging market typically does, but we feel really rewarded in the end,” Miranda said.
Looking ahead, Miranda sees an opportunity for solar energy storage to help the cash-strapped island utility provide energy. While he pursues the complicated specifics of such a deal, he’s focused on providing an economical energy source to Puerto Rican businesses and residents.
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