The morning after Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica, Jennifer Hue, a retired tax auditor living close to hard-hit Treasure Beach, woke up to devastation. Her mango, breadfruit and papaya trees were lost, their tops snapped off by 180-mile-per-hour winds. There was water everywhere.
But her roof was intact, and just as importantly, so were the solar panels she had installed two years ago. Most of her neighbors didn’t have electricity. But she did.
Neighbors began stopping by to charge their phones, to take a cool drink from the refrigerator, to message loved ones to let them know they were safe. Ms. Hue is still hosting a cousin and his mother, as well as two medical students from the local university, whose accommodations were damaged.
“The wind was like a tornado, and water came through every crevice,” Ms. Hue said. “But we didn’t lose any solar panels, and the next morning, the sun was shining bright and early,” she said. “We had our power back.”
A small but vibrant market for rooftop solar panels in Jamaica has long been seen as a promising way to wean the nation off imported fossil fuels. The country is reliant on oil and gas from abroad for its power plants, which not only is polluting but also makes Jamaica’s electricity some of the priciest in the world per kilowatt-hour.
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