Eastern Puerto Rico, Barrio San Salvador, Caguas. DC Microgrid includes a direct drive SunStar fridge, and two 12V lithium battery kits.
A short, steep walk from El Departamento de la Comida is Finca OtraCosa, a completely off-grid, DIY homestead, home to farmers and activists Tara Rodriguez Besosa and Millo Huertas. (Tara is also the co-founder of El Depa.)
Tara and Millo are dedicated to supporting the queer community in Puerto Rico by creating a safe, healing space for queer folks at their farm. As leaders of the food sovereignty movement in PR, they are also dedicated to fighting colonialism through radical self-sufficiency, and as such they have been determined to live off the grid from the beginning. With more limited resources than many of the sites we worked on, OtraCosa is a great example of a DC Microgrid built in stages; improved upon as resources allow.
For years, the folks at OtraCosa lived without a fridge, since their modest solar kits failed to support even a small, dorm-style fridge. When they heard about our direct drive refrigerators that ran off of a single solar panel, it seemed too good to be true. After visiting us at LEF, Tara was convinced that it was worth the investment. Their SunStar fridge is now one of their prize possessions and has revolutionised how they live and eat on the farm.
It was a similar story for OtraCosa powering lights and electronics. For several years Tara got by with cheap, lead acid solar kits like Goal Zero. Like many of us, they learned the hard way that a lead acid battery only works if you don’t use it. (Any cycling of a lead acid battery dramatically lowers its lifespan; you’re lucky if you get 5 years out of it before it’s completely useless.) Right before Tara heard about our DC Microgrid, they had just saved up for a better quality lithium battery kit, which had both AC and DC output. Tara knew enough to limit the use of the AC side, so the kit worked pretty well for them for a year or so, until it was destroyed in a rather dramatic fashion by a lightening strike.
The 12V battery kits we build at Living Energy Lights are designed to be rebuildable and repairable; but this is not true for almost every other solar generator on the market, including the one that Tara had unfortunately just purchased. In a bind, Tara and Millo scrambled to install 2 of our 12AH lithium kits, which are inexpensive and reasonably durable, but quite small. These kits have been enough to keep the lights on and charge a few phones and a fan, but not enough to support much computer use, or an internet router. Tara and Millo both do online work for income and have not been able to do this work from the farm, which is a challenge.
Going forward, OtraCosa plans to install a 100AH Iron Sun battery kit to support more computer use and internet access at the farm. We are helping them with fundraising, and Millo, who is a trained installer of DC equipment, is working off some of the cost by doing installations. They also plan to install a dedicated 12V lighting circuit. These two upgrades will be a dramatic improvement to quality of life for them and all the folks they host at the farm.