On November 16, 2020, a major climate change-induced disaster occurred: Hurricane Iota struck Providencia and Santa Catalina with winds of up to 240 kilometers per hour. Home to fewer than 7,000 residents, the Category 5 hurricane damaged 98 percent of Providencia Island’s energy and road infrastructure, property, and motor vehicles, causing its whole electricity grid to collapse overnight. The Colombian government took immediate action to address this catastrophe, and within 100 days, almost all electricity was restored. However, a realization emerged: while Providencia previously relied entirely on fossil fuels, Hurricane Iota created an opportunity for the island to rebuild a more sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure that could better withstand the ever-growing effects of climate change.
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On December 20, 2020, President Iván Duque Márquez announced a working group in Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy—which counted on support from USAID, ECOPETROL, the United States Energy Association, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Scaling Up Renewable Energy (SURE) program, and Colombia Inteligente—to create an Energy Master Plan for Providencia Island, which details clear steps for a more sustainable, resilient, renewable energy-based rebuilding of the Island.
The Master Plan has quantified the energy efficiency gains, reduction in operating costs, impacts on tariffs, reduction of subsidies required for the consuming communities, and the reduction of carbon emissions. In this plan, 1.8 megawatts of clean solar energy will come online, hundreds of houses will connect their rooftop solar systems, and a 2.5-megawatt hour capacity battery system will store enough excess energy from solar to power the entire island for an hour. This shift towards renewable energy and storage is estimated to save 30 percent in diesel generator fuel consumption. As clean energy and energy efficiency rise, carbon emissions, local pollutants, fuel expenditures, operating costs, and subsidies will fall significantly.
This will be the first fully automated solar mini-grid in non-connected zones of Colombia, and hopefully will provide a scalable and replicable example for other islands or off-grid systems in the region. From a national policy perspective, the Master Plan demonstrates the significance of introducing clean energy for rural systems, the potential integration of electric transport, and the importance of transforming rural energy systems to renewables to achieve Colombia’s new nationally determined contribution.
“When we begin the reconstruction of Providencia, we also aim to strengthen our island from a sustainability perspective, with a permanent alternative source of energy, or one that is complementary to diesel, which is a solar farm in Providencia that can provide energy for the island,” President Duque said during his virtual participation in the third Oil and Gas Summit in La Guajira.
Currently, the working group is conducting high-level techno-economic analyses, literature reviews and resource-sharing, workshops, capacity expansion modeling, best practices, ongoing meetings, and coordination with the Island community and energy sector stakeholders to ensure a feasible, successful, and sustainable energy transition.
Although Hurricane Iota brought devastation, Colombia’s Providencia Island chose a brighter, stronger, and resilient energy future, lighting the way for other island communities to do the same.
View a power system capacity expansion analysis published by NREL that used the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources model, known as HOMER, to detail the costs and benefits of integrating renewable energy and energy storage on Providencia Island’s remote power system. The analysis considers investment capital costs and the impact on power system operating costs.
For more information and resources on Colombia’s power sector transformation, view the USAID-NREL Partnership’s Colombia project page.
Thomas Black
Thomas Black has led renewable energy and climate change mitigation projects at USAID/Colombia since November 2016. Thomas manages U.S. government support programs for the Government of Colombia in the integration of solar and wind power into the national grid, as well as distributed solar power on and off grid, focusing on the reduction of regulatory and institutional barriers to new investment and on the potential to open these markets to US investment, products, and services. Thomas holds a Master’s Degree in Latin American Economics and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ricardo Ramirez
Ricardo Ramirez is a Senior Advisor under USAID’s SURE program. He is an electrical engineer from the Industrial University of Santander with a Master of Science in Energy Studies from the University of Sheffield in England. He has worked for the National Planning Department as Expert Commissioner of the Energy and Gas Regulation Commission, Technical Secretary of the National Natural Gas Operation Council, Control Manager of the National Hydrocarbons Agency, and Director of the Energy Mining Planning Unit. He is currently a Professor at the National University of Colombia.
Michael Ingram
Michael Ingram serves as principal investigator on multiple research projects supporting grid modernization and renewables integration. He has had multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency deployments to the U.S. Virgin Islands to assess recovery and mitigation readiness, and provided technical services in the U.S. and Puerto Rico with renewable energy interconnection policy and technical requirements; responsible for microgrid technical concept designs and economic resiliency assessments for multiple National Aeronautics and Space Administration sites, DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Army. He has been supporting the USAID-NREL Partnership project in Colombia for over three years on a variety of topics related to the integration of distributed energy resources.
Jairo Gutierrez
Jairo Gutierrez is an energy sector director at Tetra Tech leading the technical assistance in Colombia under USAID’s SURE. He has 28 years of experience in over 21 countries supporting energy planning, energy reform, and electric utility improvement programs in the U.S., Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Under SURE, he has supported the Colombian Ministry of Energy to design and implement the first energy auction for variable renewable energy and continues supporting the Ministry implementing the energy transition agenda. Mr. Gutierrez is an Electrical Engineer (Power Systems) with a Master’s in Business Management and Project Experience.
Daniella Rough
Daniella Rough is an international project manager at NREL, with over 15 years of experience in 16 countries, working in energy sector decarbonization, renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric transport, climate change mitigation, NDC and long-term strategy roadmap development. She currently supports an international project portfolio at NREL, including the USAID-NREL Partnership Project in Colombia, Net Zero World Initiative in Argentina, and the Global Climate Action Partnership Low Emissions Development Strategies in Latin American and Caribbean Platform. She has a Bachelor of Science in Earth Sciences from the University of California, a MSc in Watershed Science from Colorado State University, and a MSc in Renewable Energy Management from the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Johanna Koolemans-Beynen
Johanna Koolemans-Beynen is program manager at USEA. She coordinates USEA activities in Colombia and Honduras, under the USAID-funded Energy Utility Partnership Program, focusing on the regulatory and legal framework surrounding the integration of renewable energy onto the grid. She helped set up a worldwide Business Innovation Partnership aimed at helping utilities incorporate business process innovation principles into their grid modernization and energy management projects. Her Bachelor’s Degree is from Georgetown University, and her Master’s is from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. She also completed coursework for a Master’s Degree in Economics from the Colegio de Mexico.
Emily Klos
Emily Klos is a communications project coordinator at NREL supporting international activities and USAID. She has seven years of experience in communications, with four years devoted to national laboratories and nearly three years to international nonprofits. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Southeastern University and a minor in Community Development and Poverty Alleviation.
