Empowering Puerto Rico

Thirteen years ago, almost to the week, The Daily News ran a profile of Megan Kerins, who grew up in Newport and was attending Bard College in New York at the time.

The piece focused on her interest in environmental engineering and how she was studying whether a hydropower turbine would be feasible for a creek that runs along the campus in Annandale-on-Hudson.

“It’s the field I want to go into,” said Kerins, who was 21 at the time. “I feel renewable energy is intensely needed.”

Kerins went on to graduate from Bard and earn a post-graduate degree in environmental engineering from Stanford University. And she has carved out a career in the field she aspired to be in.

This past July, she joined Rocky Mountain Institute, a think- and do-tank, as a senior associate. Her primary responsibility has been working with stakeholders in Puerto Rico on installing solar microgrids to power critical infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals and senior centers, in the most vulnerable places.

“You can’t have a productive economy without electricity, so it’s really a matter of people being empowered to have the life that they want,” she told The Daily News on Thursday.

Beyond tapping into her professional expertise, the work combines a few of her passions: environmentalism, travel and philanthropy.

“I think being socially aware was big in our family,” said her mother, Melissa Koppelman. “I was a school teacher in Middletown for 21 years. My son graduated from Stanford with a math degree and went into teaching. We were always interested in education. The whole idea was to help other people without preaching it to my children.”

Rocky Mountain Institute is a nonprofit that has offices in Boulder, Colorado, where Kerins lives; Balsat, Colorado; New York City; Washington, D.C., and Beijing. Its mission is adopting market-based solutions that shift electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewables.

The organization partnered with Resilient Power Puerto Rico in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and its infrastructure in September 2017. It took 130 days to restore power to seven out of 10 people there.

The two organizations have collaborated on policy and implementation of solar microgrids, which are standalone electricity systems independent of the power grid. Solar is a more durable alternative to the island’s grid that was rendered inoperable after the hurricane struck, Kerins said. While 100 percent of grid customers were left without power in the storm's wake, 75 to 80 percent of solar facilities remained structurally intact, she explained.

Rocky Mountain Institute has completed a microgrid as a pilot project at a school and anticipates completing three additional projects at schools by the end of March and five more in April. Resilient Power Puerto Rico has implemented another 30 microgrids on its own. Kerins travels to Puerto Rico about once a month for a few weeks at a time to stay updated on progress.

“We’ve mostly been focusing on municipalities in the mountains where Maria went through,” she said. “Not only were they the most vulnerable because of socioeconomic factors and the distance between them and health care facilities, but they were also some of the last communities to receive power from [the utility after the hurricane].”

Among the questions Rocky Mountain Institute and Resilient Power Puerto Rico grappled with as they selected sites for microgrids: “Who is most susceptible to impact when … hazards occur? How can we maximize the social impact of our actions? What can we do to ensure we are addressing the unique barrier faced by the islands’ most vulnerable communities and groups?”

The microgrids will serve as the primary power source for each site, with the grid serving as backup and battery power as the last resort. At this point, the two organizations do not have authority from the utility to funnel excess electricity generated by the microgrids into the grid, Kerins said.

Rocky Mountain Institute relies on donations and low-interest loans to finance the microgrids. “Because our target market is low- to moderate-income communities, we need to bridge the gap in access to renewable microgrids,” she said. Demonstrating that these systems provide a viable alternative to the grid could encourage further investment in the technology.

Access to electricity is a human-rights issue, said Kerins, who noted that 1.2 billion more people gained access to it within the past two years. “It’s really a global movement that I feel proud to be a part of,” she said.

Rocky Mountain Institute is running a funding drive and will match the first $100,000 raised. So far, $75,000 has been raised, Kerins said. For more information about the organization and donating, visit rmi.org.

dgomes@newportri.com