Creating Networks of Microgrid Resilience

For microgrid activist Devin De Wulf, resilience is not an abstract concept to be taken care of by a utility or by anonymous government officials; its something the people of every neighborhood have to practice in preparation for a storm driven by climate change that will inevitably disrupt their lives. When Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans with 150 mile per hour winds  on August 29, 2021,Devin De Wulf made sure he was prepared. It was not just a process of  taping windows and stocking extra food but making certain that the solar panels on his home were connected to two batteries instead of one. This would insure  that when the storm hit and the power went out in New Orleans which he was sure it would and the temperature reached 100 degree, he could be certain that; his electric stove, his refrigerator, the power to recharge his phone and above all his air conditioning would still work. Once his own personal microgrid was prepared, he was ready to help his neighbors.

“I had seen what happened when category 4 storms hit solar panels; the solar panels generally were undamaged but if they needed to be connected to the main grid, they were useless.” When the power goes out and there are suddenly more than 400,000 people living in their neighborhoods the city agencies don’t have enough resources to help everyone who needs it.  People have to find ways to help each other”.

 Devin De Wulf is a. citizen activist who believes in the power of concerned neighbors turning their communities into microgrids . He is the founder of the Krewe of Red Beans and also, Feed the Second Line.

Devin is a stay-at-home dad of two, an artist, and parade organizer based in New OrleansIt was just not the disaster that was worrying, Devin has two children. He wondered how they would be able to cope if there were more storms. “The scariest part, the dark thought I kept from my young children  - is that we still have two more months of hurricane season.”

Devin lives in the neighborhood of Bywater in the 9th ward, one of the 27 districts that make up the City. of New Orleans. The city’s population of 990,000 is approximately that of Honolulu. The 9th ward is a low lying part of the city. It has often been devastated by flooding This was what happened during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 when parts of the protective seawall around the city known as the levee collapsed.

The levee did not break during Hurricane Ida, However the power went our August 29 and would not go on again until Sept 8. During those days  everybody in the neighborhood had to make do. Those without power suffered. 8 people died of heatstroke.

“When there’s the hurricane most of the affluent people leave the city. This leaves behind those who can’t easily leave; the poor and the elderly.”

One of the first things Devin, did was make his home accessible to those in need.

“ On my block I helped Mr. Roy plug in his oxygen machine when he needed to. Mr. Joe and his partner hooked up their fridge to our system during daylight hours. We had a cellphone charging station on my front porch supplying power for people’s only means of communication with the outside world” More than 200 people a day came to his porch to charge their phones.

People ate what they could but their food soon spoiled. Feeding stations had been set up by the city at rec centers churches and other places but the heat was so bad it was dangerous for people to walk to where the food was. As for driving, the gas stations were closed and people didn’t have enough fuel to get to food.

So what did the people eat when the power was out and they couldn’t get to the feeding stations? Generally the food that was available to them from fridges and freezers that were no longer plugged in.

Then something happened that changed Devins ideas on how his neighbors could be helped. Because he had worked as a middle school history teacher and the organizer of a neighborhood parade, he was known to restaurant owners in his neighborhood as a community organizer. In New Orleans it’s a tradition for individual streets to plan parades in their neighborhood to celebrate Mardi Gras. He began getting calls asking him to take food before it spoiled so that it could be used to feed people.

To give an idea of how much was food was on offer in a city famous for its restaurants, Devin said that at a single restaurant might need to dispose of $10,000 worth of meat, cheese and produce. The problem is not just the waste, the hungry people it’s the methane generated by hundreds of restaurants all at once.

To deal with the problem of waste he organized a means for local residents to cook food for local residents. In new Orelans the common dish for working class is red beans and rice. The approximate equivalent in Hawaii would be something like vegetables with saimin or chili with rice.

The success of his interim feeding program led him to his current idea he calls “Get lit stay lit”. Instead of leaving things as they are and having to improvise each time he thought that special efforts coud be made to help finance and provide solar panels and lithium batteries for restaurants that were in the area. They would be able to feed the people the government couldn’t and in return they would receive a permanent reduction in their energy bills.

He did the math. In an emergency a small restaurant might feed 300 people per day. A midsized restaurant  1000 per day and a large restaurant 3,000 per day. The installation of the solar panels and batteries would save the restaurant owners significantly on their electricity during normal periods and during hurricanes would keep the freezers and refrigerators going. The significant saving that would come from being off grid compared to what they would have to pay if they were grid connected would enable the people of Bywater  to easily finance and pay for their solar panels.

He wrote that envisioned :

“In the storms aftermath, restaurants storm-proofed with solar panels and batteries would serve as hubs providing food cooling stations, ice and charging stations for their neighbors – a decentralized network of resilience, giving each block, a better chance to survive – Particularly in our most impoverished neighborhoods – these climate hardened restaurants could provide communities with healing and sustenance on their worst days”. Devin will be speaking at the RRH Forum on November 16. For more information about his work go to http://redbeansparade.com/