Puerto Rico parish aims to be climate resilience hub to respond to extreme storms

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Resilience hubs need durability and stability amid an emergency situation to keep power running to meet neighborhood needs.

Ortiz said the solar panels installed at Nuestra Señora del Carmen are made to sustain winds for a Category 3 hurricane. "They tend to hold on," he said.

The panels in the church's system each have micro-inverters, which take direct energy from the sun and turn it into electricity. This means the whole system will keep running even if one panel blows down. In contrast, if damage occurs on a system with a central inverter for all the panels, the power may go down for the whole system.

Either way, getting a panel back up isn't too complex. Ortiz remembers how those with solar fared after María. "I saw it firsthand in my neighborhood," he said. One neighbor's panels stayed intact, and the other had two fly off, but both had electricity.

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