Rooftops are now the country's second power station
1,456 megawatts nobody planned from the top down
Rooftop solar passed natural gas in 2025.
By the end of 2025 Puerto Rico's rooftops added up to 1,456 megawatts, 20% of the island's entire generating capacity. That puts them ahead of natural gas, at 1,391, and second only to oil.
The striking part is not the figure but how it was reached. Between 2016 and 2025, 81% of all new capacity in the country was installed on a roof. It did not come out of an infrastructure plan: it came out of 163,000 household decisions, one house at a time, most of them made by people who got tired of losing a full fridge.
It is the closest thing there is to a power station built by accumulation. Nobody signed its contract or cut its ribbon, and today it produces more than 10% of the electricity the country consumes.
The grid operator projects 60% more by 2028. If it is right, the question for the next decade stops being how much generation is needed and becomes who controls it, because the answer is no longer in one place.