Design/Engineering

New Microgrid Lab in Adjuntas Promises Energy Innovation for Puerto Rico

May 9, 2025

The lab will connect the Casa Pueblo, Plaza de la Independencia Energética and Adjuntas Pueblo Solar microgrids together to help power research initiatives in addition to continuing their ongoing work as critical energy connection for homes, businesses and public facilities in Adjuntas.

Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor

Aerial view of Adjuntas microgrid and renewable energy courtesy of Casa Pueblo

Adjuntas, a mountainous community prone to devastating power outages in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, is home to numerous microgrids which power both homes and businesses.

Those microgrids are now being connected together at the center of a new laboratory focused on developing decarbonized and defensible energy infrastructure for the island.

The Casa Pueblo microgrid in Adjuntas was developed by the team at Casa Pueblo in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Recently, California-based New Sun Road's Stellar Edge Control technoogy was added to provide remote monitoring and control for the Living Energy Innovation Laboratory.

The lab will connect the Casa Pueblo, Plaza de la Independencia Energética and Adjuntas Pueblo Solar microgrids together to help power research initiatives in addition to continuing its ongoing work as a critical energy connection for homes, businesses and public facilities in Adjuntas.

“Developing this laboratory means formally entering the field of energy innovation, and it represents a new level of work within the just energy transition,” said Arturo Massol Deyá, Director of Casa Pueblo, in a statement.

Austin Cappon, vice president of engineering for New Sun Road, visited Puerto Rico last month to help commission the Stellar Edge controller at the Adjuntas Casa Pueblo microgrid. He also met with Massol Deyá, who co-founded Casa Pueblo decades ago.

New Sun Road’s technology is enabling real-time monitoring of existing system assets in the microgrid cluster, which include solar power and battery storage. The microgrid orchestration work includes a partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is funded through a U.S. Department of Energy grant.

“Set in mountainous terrain subject to strong rain and wind, the site experiences regular power outages even more so than the endemic island-wide power outages that often make headlines,” reads the New Sun Road LinkedIn post about Adjuntas and its microgrids. “Unique is the number of true microgrids that have been constructed locally, with the ability to fully island from the utility in the event of an outage.”

The Casa Pueblo Living Energy Innovation Laboratory will interconnect the microgrids into a network that, once fully realized, will communicate with each other to maximize energy usage and protect community resiliency during daily operations and emergency situations.

“We’re not just interconnecting microgrids to create Puerto Rico and the Caribbean’s first solar microgrid network—we’re doing so in a real-world learning environment, with authentic climate variables, natural events, failures of the traditional power grid, real people and consumption patterns, and live data,” Massol Deyá pointed out.

Adjuntas is a town of about 18,000 residents sometimes called “the Switzerland of Puerto Rico" because of its mountainous environment and relatively chilly weather compared to the rest of the island. It is located inside the Cordillera Central mountain range.

The community has been impacted by numerous cataclysmic events, including Hurricane Maria and Fiona, which destroyed electrical infrastructure in 2017 and 2022, respectively. An earthquake in 2020 also severely damaged the power facilities in the town.

The Casa Pueblo-based Living Energy Innovation Laboratory will also work with universities to offer technical guidance to students on microgrid design, equipment, operation, repair and maintenance.

About the Author

Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.