Caguas city centre, Eastern Puerto Rico. Microgrid includes a 48V direct drive pump, a 12V nickel iron battery kit with lighting circuit, and a SunStar direct drive fridge.
Urbe Apie is a non-profit based in the city centre of Caguas, Puerto Rico. Their mission is to revitalise abandoned urban spaces for social, cultural, and economic development of the community. To date they are occupying 8 spaces in downtown Caguas. Their projects include residences, an art studio, a boutique, a museum, and a community garden called Huerto Feliz.
Huerto Feliz is an oasis in the city. Every morning neighbours come by to nibble on Aji peppers and smell the lemon grass. Erid, who attended our training in 2023, is the garden manager and it is clearly a labor of love for him. He’ll talk to you about the plants as long as you have time to listen.
As an occupied space, Huerto Feliz does not have access to grid power or city water in any reliable fashion. Before we built the Microgrid, there were no lights and sometimes no water in the space. The DC Microgrid helped create a welcoming and comfortable space for people in the community to be able to enjoy the garden, charge their phones, get water, and store food.
The water system we built uses rainwater collected from surrounding buildings, and will be essential for watering the garden and providing services for the community during an emergency. We also installed a direct drive fridge, and a charging station, and lighting circuit, including both security lights and festive string lights for the plaza next to the garden.
As funding allows, we’d love to continue to work with Urbe Apie in building DC systems for their other buildings, including their residences. Their work is really inspiring an it was a pleasure to work with them. Learn more about Urbe Apie how to support their urban revitalisation work by visiting their website, https://www.urbeapie.com.