Paul Prosper: Living Where the Grid Is a Suggestion

How retired U.S. military officer Paul Prosper built a solar-powered home in Montego Bay

The Logic of Redundancy

Paul Prosper learned early that systems fail. Not all at once, but in layers.

As part of the U.S. military aviation world, he spent years around aircraft designed with no single point of failure. “Everything was split up,” he recalls. “No generator ever powered too many critical systems.” If one failed, another picked up the load.

That logic stayed with him long after retirement.

In 2021, Paul moved back to Montego Bay, Jamaica, returning to a place he had known since childhood. The island was as beautiful as he remembered: sunlight, warmth, ocean air, but the infrastructure carried familiar uncertainty. Electricity worked most days. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes without warning.

Living in the Caribbean means accepting that storms are not exceptions. They are part of the calendar.

When Power Is Not a Given

In Jamaica, electricity comes from a single provider. Maintenance outages happen without notice. Storms arrive with expanding windows. Hurricanes that once belonged to August now show up in June and October.

“It’s better than the 80s,” Paul says, “but it still happens.”

At first, he tolerated it. Short outages were manageable. But in 2024, Hurricane Beryl, passing seventy miles south of the island, knocked out power in Montego Bay for several days. That was the moment he stopped observing and started acting.

His mother had already been there. She owned small Jackery units: a Explorer 300 and a Explorer 500. Paul had noticed them, understood the logic, but hadn’t committed. Beryl changed that.

He went online, watched reviews, and started where many do: with a Jackery Explorer 1000.

Starting Small, Learning Fast

The Jackery Explorer 1000 review, in Paul’s experience, revealed both capability and limitation. It could keep essentials running, charging devices, and maintaining communication, but it wasn’t designed for long outages or refrigeration-heavy households.

That mattered, especially now.

Paul and his partner had welcomed a baby in February 2024. By the time Hurricane Beryl arrived in July, food safety wasn’t optional. “When you have an electric stove and no power, you can’t cook,” he explains. “And the fridge, that’s everything.”

They hunted for hot meals daily. The ice melted. Routines broke down.

The lesson was clear: short-term solutions do not scale.

Escalation by Experience

After Beryl, Paul upgraded for himself and for his mother. Both received Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro units. The intent was simple: no more extended outages without refrigeration.

But real understanding came later.

In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, tore through the region. Power and water disappeared. Days stretched into weeks. This time, Paul had equipment, but not yet the right configuration.

The Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro review, under these conditions, revealed a critical truth: solar panels matter as much as generators. Paul had one SolarSaga panel and a third-party alternative. The difference was stark.

The third-party panel barely produced power. The Jackery panel performed reliably, but one panel wasn’t enough.

They began cycling the fridge: charging during the day, running it at night. It worked, but barely. The system demanded constant attention.

“That wasn’t sustainable,” Paul says.

Reinforcements Arrive

Paul made a decision that changed everything. He ordered the Jackery HomePower 3000, along with two SolarSaga 500X panels, and paid extra to have them flown in immediately.

He assembled the panels himself, in the kitchen, by flashlight and phone light, until 4:30 a.m.

Later that morning, he set them up in a W-configuration facing the sun.

What followed felt unreal.

By 1 p.m., batteries were fully charged. When one generator was fully charged, it went inside to power the fridge, and the other was swapped out to collect solar energy outside. By evening, one unit sat at 100 percent, the other at 80.

The shift was dramatic.

Paul describes the Jackery HomePower 3000 experience as going from constant calculation to abundance. Not excess, but stability. The fridge stayed cold. The freezer stayed frozen. Meals returned to normal. Ice cubes reappeared.

They avoided electric heat appliances, but otherwise, life resumed.

The Neighborhood Watches

Paul’s solar setup didn’t go unnoticed.

Panels moved from the backyard at sunrise to the front field by mid-morning. Generators sat beneath a beach tent to protect them from rain. Cars slowed. Neighbors stopped.

Meanwhile, gas stations were overwhelmed. People waited hours for fuel. Some ran generators all night, the noise relentless.

Paul charged silently, directly from the sun.

When he added the SolarSaga 500X panels, curiosity turned into conversation. “It looks like a solar power factory over there!” one neighbor joked after seeing the setup. Soon after, two neighbors placed orders.

In a Jackery SolarSaga 500X review, Paul emphasizes what he learned the hard way: panels are not the place to cut costs. Output matters. Consistency matters. The panel is the heart of the system.

Living With the Sun

As power returned, Paul found himself reluctant to unplug. Jamaica has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. Sunshine, by contrast, is constant.

He now watches the sun’s path instinctively. He knows where panels perform best. He recognizes poor installations on neighboring rooftops.

Solar literacy, once theoretical, is now lived knowledge.

Looking ahead, Paul plans to integrate a transfer switch when he buys a home, making Jackery central to his household energy system. He’s considering additional stackable units and more panels.

This is not a temporary fix. It’s a redesign.

What Power Means Now

When asked what Jackery represents, Paul answers simply:

“No power, no problem, with a Jackery, it’s free-99 as long as the sun shines.”

It’s not bravado. It’s a lived experience.

For someone trained in redundancy, raised in hurricane territory, and now responsible for a young family, power isn’t about convenience. It’s about systems that hold when everything else slips.

And in Montego Bay, where storms are certain, and sunlight is abundant, Paul has learned how to build one that does.