The rooftop solar projects in Salinas and Guayama are community driven and embody empowerment by excluded and marginalized groups of people in what is traditionally considered the exclusive realm of large -for- profit -hyper- technological foreign corporations. This is transformative change from passive energy consumers and ratepayers to agents of change in the realm of energy generation and management. Much of which is done through mutual aid efforts that are the furthest thing possible from capitalist growth and development. People are becoming energy literate and literally taking energy into their own hands collectively.

The community-based solar energy projects are an expression of solidarity and the fight for survival that confronts the privatization of electric service. A privatization process that has made electric service from the centralized grid worse, much more unreliable with no end in sight to the constant trampling and denial of the essential human right to electricity which the corporations seek to commodify.

The main challenge is that the for-profit electric corporations have captured the public energy corporation, the regulator, the government agencies and the historic amount of funds allocated for the electric system. Puerto Rico is experiencing something akin to the "resource curse". The $19.2B+ that has been allocated for the electric system is attracting capitalism's greediest actors, who not at all concerned with serving the public interest. The service is so bad that there is a real ground swell to terminate the Luma contract which would open up the opportunity to direct the funds and resources to transform the electric system and governance of the public utility to serve the public interest, needs and wellbeing.