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Figure 1: Puerto Rico Climate & Energy Nonprofit Ecosystem (NYC Climate Week 2026). EarthSpark operates in Salinas and Bayamón alongside 34 other organizations island-wide. Source: Puerto Rico NYC Climate Week Coalition - Let’s Share the Sun
How EarthSpark International's Work in Puerto Rico Is Enhancing a Model for Energy Access Everywhere
Adam Eberwein, Technical Lead, EarthSpark International
At the conclusion of 2023, the EarthSpark team took a significant step in delivering on the goal of building resilient, local energy systems and businesses that empower communities around the world by growing ties in the Puerto Rico energy justice community. EarthSpark arrived through an invitation not simply to deliver systems and share experience, but also to listen, build trust, and find its place within a complex, already-active ecosystem of community energy organizations. Nearly three years later, the EarthSpark team’s efforts in Puerto Rico have yielded a network of deep collaborations, hard-won technical insight, and a body of work quietly shaping how EarthSpark approaches electricity systems in Puerto Rico, Haiti, South Sudan, and beyond. Below, we share that journey: the relationships formed, the projects designed, the setbacks absorbed, and the lessons that travel across geographies.
Arriving in Puerto Rico: A Crowded and Purposeful Space
Puerto Rico's climate and energy ecosystem is inspiring. In addition to the many academic, industry, and commercial actors, a wealth of non-profit organizations are also doing challenging and meaningful work. The “Nonprofit Ecosystem” overview below, developed by Let’s Share the Sun and the Puerto Rico NYC Climate Week Coalition for NYC Climate Week 2026, highlights 35 organizations operating across 31 municipalities, spanning community energy cooperatives, direct service providers, place-based community groups, and policy advocates. And this is only a fraction of the total representation. Into this ecosystem, EarthSpark arrived not with a predetermined project plan, but with introductions: key members of EarthSpark connected with Solar United Neighbors, Abeyno Coop, Asociación De Residentes La Margarita (ARLM), and other community-based organizations, forming partnerships that continue to this day, focusing on the needs of La Margarita and beyond.
What distinguished EarthSpark's entry was its positioning: deep global expertise in microgrid design and community-centered deployment, arriving without benefit of a pre-existing institutional footprint on the island. By pairing its technical capacity with partners like Abeyno Coop, who hold deep community roots in Salinas and La Margarita, the project team established a collaborative model where each party contributed useful, complementary elements.
From Relationships to Projects: Technical Work Grounded in Community Need
Through mid-2024, EarthSpark and project partners translated community energy needs into fundable project frameworks across multiple programs:
- DOE Energy Resilience Fund: Resident surveying in La Margarita and a residential solar+storage deployment plan.
- EPA Community Change Grant: Block microgrid design and deployment plan developed with community partners.
- DOE-ETIPP: “Block” and “feeder-level” microgrid designs developed in partnership with Sandia National
Laboratories.
- DOE-SOLVE IT: Energy efficiency upgrades designed for low-income residents.
Central to this work was EarthSpark's focus on medium-voltage and low-voltage distributed energy resources, applied through a three-tier microgrid framework: behind-the-meter residential systems, block microgrids connecting clusters of homes, and feeder-level microgrids serving entire neighborhoods.
Figure 2: EarthSpark's Three-Tier Microgrid Framework in Puerto Rico — from residential installations to community-scale infrastructure, developed in partnership with communities & national laboratories. Base Image Source: Adobe Stock, “Transmission and Distribution,” Image #1363695341
Figure 3: EarthSpark's Timeline in Puerto Rico (Q4 2023–Q2 2026) — from relationship-building and project scoping, through funding setbacks, to pilot installations and new partnerships.
Navigating Setbacks — and Rebuilding
The late-2024 period brought a sharp reminder of federal policy volatility. The Department of Energy (DOE) halted and stalled correspondence on the Energy Resilience Fund. The EPA blocked access to — and then canceled — the Community Change Grant after it had already been awarded. Other anticipated funding sources fell away in parallel.
EarthSpark's response was instructive: rather than retreating, we leaned into partnerships and philanthropic relationships to maintain momentum. With support from Solar United Neighbors and the Dunn Family Charitable Foundation and alongside other partnering organizations, we installed four pilot residential solar+storage systems in high-need residences in La Margarita — converting a setback into a proof point. These installations also advanced EarthSpark's work on Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”)-based project structures, a financing model with potential applicability well beyond Puerto Rico's borders.
2025 brought a second municipality: Bayamón. Through the EPA's Municipal Investment Fund, EarthSpark led a coalition developing a Public-Private Partnership Plan for municipal solar+storage projects — supporting the municipal government directly and expanding EarthSpark's institutional range. As of mid-2026, engagement continues in Salinas and Bayamón, and an early-stage microgrid study award in a third municipality signals growing credibility across the island.
A Two-Way Bridge: How Puerto Rico Strengthens EarthSpark's Global Work
EarthSpark's flagship programs in Haiti — community minigrids serving thousands of households with no prior grid access — and its follow-up work in South Sudan represent the core of its global mission. What does Puerto Rico, a US territory with, at times, federal resources and an existing grid, have to teach about energy access in these contexts? The answer is quite a lot, and the learnings flow in both directions.
First, Puerto Rico has sharpened EarthSpark's technical tools. Designing microgrids with National Laboratory of the Rockies and Sandia National Laboratories in a jurisdiction with extensive engineering standards, permitting, and interconnection requirements forces rigor that strengthens EarthSpark's practice globally (see published study and poster).
The three-tier microgrid framework is directly applicable to Haiti and South Sudan, where sequencing energy access from single-customer systems to shared community infrastructure is equally applicable.
Second, Puerto Rico has tested EarthSpark's community engagement methodology in a new cultural and institutional context. Partnerships with Abeyno Coop and ARLM have reinforced the conviction that durable energy access requires durable community structures: a principle foundational to our work in Haiti, now refined through the experience of navigating US federal institutions alongside Spanish-speaking communities with a complex and historically often negative history of engagement with US institutions.
Third, Puerto Rico has exposed EarthSpark to financing instruments unavailable in its international geographies. The ITC-based project structure under development in La Margarita does not translate directly to Haiti or South Sudan, but the intellectual labor of designing financing that reduces grant dependence and aligns incentives between investors, installers, and communities is exactly what EarthSpark is pursuing internationally.
And the flow reverses. EarthSpark's decade-plus of operating minigrids where communities have no fallback gives the organization a distinctive voice in Puerto Rico's policy conversations. When EarthSpark sits in discussions about microgrid regulation in Salinas or Bayamón, it carries lived knowledge of what real resilience gaps look like. That perspective sharpens the conversation — and elevates what Puerto Rico's energy ecosystem is building for everyone. Equally important is the ability to listen quietly and learn, as the energy, creativity and ingenuity behind ideas of other entities often extend far beyond what we have ever considered in other contexts.
Looking Forward
EarthSpark's three years in Puerto Rico have not followed a clean arc. Funding has been canceled; federal partners have gone quiet. But the through-line is instructive: the relationships formed in Q4 2023 with Solar United Neighbors, Abeyno Coop, ARLM and many others remain intact and active. The technical work has overcome the disruptions. Community trust, built through consistent presence and trusted partnership, has proven more durable than any single grant. What EarthSpark is building in Puerto Rico is not just a set of projects. It is a model for how an international organization focused on energy access can participate in a complex local ecosystem, contribute its unique capacities without displacing what is already there, and through authentic partnerships, strengthen both local capacity and EarthSpark's capacity to build better energy systems with communities around the world.
Wanda Ríos Colorado, President of Abeyno Coop, and a Coop member point to the member's newly installed solar+battery system that is providing energy resilience for the member's home in La Margarita, Puerto Rico
“Working with the EarthSpark team has been an extraordinary experience for Abeyno Coop and the La Margarita community. From the beginning, EarthSpark has treated our community not simply as beneficiaries, but as partners in building our own energy future. Their technical expertise, commitment, and respect for community leadership have helped us demonstrate that residents can be more than energy consumers—we can be prosumers, producing and managing our own clean energy while building resilience, creating local economic opportunities, and keeping more of our energy dollars within the community. EarthSpark has believed in our vision and worked alongside us to turn that vision into something real.”