Everyone loves a vacation. But that’s the problem: The world’s holiday destinations are bursting at the seams with visitors. Workers at the Louvre in Paris recently went on strike, saying they were suffering from exhaustion. In Venice, Italy, along with a number of Greek islands, the largest cruise ships are now blocked from docking, and day-tripping travelers face new tourism taxes. Other popular island destinations like the Caribbean, while not overwhelmed just yet, are also seeing strong growth. Air travel passengers to Puerto Rico increased by 8% in 2024, and cruise ship visitors rose by 10%, new highs for the U.S. territory, according to the government’s tourism board. This has placed real pressure on the island’s ability to meet all of its energy demand.

The U.S. territory is also still recovering from hurricanes that struck in 2017 and 2022, which have strained the island’s ability to meet not just tourism demand for energy, but local demand too. Job growth in leisure and hospitality grew by more than 5% last year, to top 101,000 workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, Puerto Rico’s energy use has recovered strongly from the 2020 lows, advancing from 238 trillion BTUs to 280 trillion BTUs in 2023. The island’s emissions have followed the same course, going from 16 to 19 million metric tons in the same period, according to data from the EIA.

Because Puerto Rico faces the classic energy trilemma of trying to grow and expand available electricity supply while choosing solutions that are both affordable and more sustainable, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) realized it needs to modernize its power plants.  According to John Ingham, strategic energy sector leader for GE Vernova’s aeroderivatives business, cutting-edge aeroderivative turbines would help Puerto Rico solve its trilemma by running the electricity system at a stable frequency, helping to address demand growth, and becoming a platform to better grow renewables.

“I just presented the case of Puerto Rico at a conference, explaining how the island’s volatile solar supply could benefit from installation of aeroderivative units,” Ingham says. “They’ve proven to be excellent at grid stability.” He points out that for islands and other small domains that want to pursue higher levels of renewables penetration, it’s critical that the power grid run at a smooth frequency. “Frequency is the only thing that keeps everyone on the grid together.”

A Road to Renewables

As stipulated by the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, PREPA plans to obtain 40% of its electricity supply from renewable resources by 2025, 60% by 2040, and 100% by 2050, according to the EIA. Despite current challenges, the island has managed to grow renewables already, from 800 million kilowatt-hours in 2020 to 1.1 billion kWh in 2023. In percentage terms, that is strong progress, but renewables still make up only a bit more than 5% of Puerto Rico’s total power generation. Laying down a foundation of efficient natural gas turbines is key to the island’s long-term goal to decarbonize its power by midcentury.

This week, GE Vernova completed an agreement with Puerto Rico’s RG Engineering to bring in six LM2500XPRESS aeroderivative gas turbines. The LM2500s are a unique form of portable infrastructure, especially suited to the range of needs found in a place like Puerto Rico, because they’ve been engineered to flourish in challenging regions with less modern energy systems. They are modular and have been specifically engineered to make installation easy and quick. “The modularity is so high that each of the packages comes readily assembled from the factory,” says Ingham. “Instead of having 130 electrical connections, the LM2500XPRESS has just 25 cables, and they are all pre-cut. Each plug is identified with a label, and you just go and plug them in.”

With their plug-and-play capability, the turbines can act initially as temporary power supply but can be utilized later as permanent supply, transitioning easily from temporary status to full-time worker. This can address Puerto Rico’s needs: On the one hand, the island is capacity-constrained in the short term — meaning it needs new power “yesterday” — but on a longer timeline, the territory needs to get to higher levels of firm power to support better growth of renewables. The LMs’ capability spans this need — from raw development to the higher-level goal of supporting renewables’ growth to reduce carbon emissions.

Think Local

“From the Caribbean to the Pacific, island nations are seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine their energy systems,” says Midhat Mirabi, managing director of aero new units at GE Vernova. “For decades, these regions relied on diesel and heavy fuel oil (HFO) reciprocating engines technologies that, while reliable, come with low inertia and high emissions, challenging grid stability and sustainability.”

But that’s changing fast, adds Mirabi. “We’re seeing islands like Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Haiti leapfrog to more sustainable, faster, and more stable power solutions with aeroderivative gas turbines. In these more remote domains, power plant operators are future-proofing their assets by adopting a resilient, lower-carbon technology.”

Mirabi compares it to the transformation happening behind the meter at data centers all across the U.S., where up time, flexibility, and emissions reduction are mission critical. “GE Vernova’s aeroderivative turbines are uniquely positioned to meet this moment by combining speed, agility, and grid support in ways that empower plant operators to lead with confidence and sustainability.”

The LM2500XPRESS can start up from cold to full power in five minutes or less, and with its dry low emissions combustor (DLE) it can restrain the output of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) to low levels. After combustion, an optional selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system can remove common emissions through a catalytic converter, transforming NO_x into water vapor and nitrogen, and it’s able to reduce post-combustion emissions to 2.5 parts per million, making it among the lowest-emitting gas turbine technologies available today.

Growing renewables can be a challenge for small domains that can’t easily access the stability of large power grids. Even with efficient natural gas turbines, many of these locations will still be dependent on imported liquid natural gas (LNG). But as a platform for renewables growth, these aeroderivative units have built a track record, and large economies like Germany have also used them to allow higher penetration of wind and solar. Ingham says it’s not about a competition between natural gas and renewables, but rather a system of mutual strength. Dan Brouillette, former U.S. energy secretary, says that “natural gas is an essential partner for maintaining grid reliability and deploying more renewables.”

“I think that’s brilliant,” Ingham notes. “Because you do need that support to increase the use of renewables.”