Max Lainfiesta

Max Lainfiesta is a Senior Associate in the Africa, Islands, and Southeast Asia program at RMI. He focuses on scaling up solar-and-battery microgrid deployments in Puerto Rico. The main objective of his work is to achieve community resilience by ensuring that critical facilities providing essential services have uninterrupted power supply before, during, and after emergencies and natural disasters.

His work is divided into two main streams:

working with philanthropic and financial institutions to create a blended finance fund that provides subsidies and low-interest loans to promote microgrid deployment across Puerto Rico,

and working with municipalities to unlock access to federal funds for microgrid deployment in public facilities.

Background

Max comes to RMI with a background in sustainable energy systems engineering, the subject in which he earned his Ph.D. He has designed and managed the installation of small- to large-scale uninterrupted power supplies, energy efficiency projects, battery energy-storage systems, small wind turbines, solar dehydration systems, hybrid microgrids, 10-plus MW of small- to commercial-scale solar water-heating projects, and 60-plus MW of small- to utility-scale solar PV systems. Max has done much of his work in developing countries.

He has 10-plus years of experience in university-level teaching and corporate training. He has received renewable energy training in Germany, Israel, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United States and has been a trainer in Central America, Mexico, and the United States. During his Ph.D. studies, Max focused his research on microgrids, polygeneration microgrids, and multi-microgrid systems design, control, and optimization. Max has published several peer-reviewed papers in the energy, STEM education, and emerging-technologies fields.