Puerto Rico — A critical failure in Puerto Rico’s power grid has caused a massive blackout affecting a large part of the island, according to a post on Gov. Pedro Pierluisi’s X account.
The New Year’s Eve blackout has knocked out power for nearly 1.3 million users, or about 88% of customers, according to LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American power company responsible for power distribution and transmission on the island.
“We can report that work is already underway to restore service with the San Juan and Palo Seco plants,” Pierluisi said.
“We are demanding answers and solutions from both Luma and Genera, who must expedite the restart of the generating units outside the fault area and keep the people duly informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout the Island.”
Luma Energy’s Emergency Operations Center is working with Genera and other power collaborators to restore the electrical system and power to the island as quickly as possible, after a total blackout that began Tuesday morning at 5:30 a.m., according to the company’s X account.
The full restoration process will take about a day or two, the company added.
The outage is just the latest time that Puerto Rico’s inconsistent power system has faltered on a mass scale.
Power outages on the island have been a long-running source of frustration for Puerto Ricans who rely on a fragile and poorly-maintained power grid, with modernization efforts slow to materialize over several decades, first by a publicly-owned entity and today by a private caretaker.
The collapse of the grid in 2017 after Hurricane Maria left hundreds of thousands of people without power for months. The outage was considered the largest blackout in US history in terms of the total number of lost hours of electricity.
Since then, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded $9.9 billion for permanent projects to repair damage caused by Hurricane María. LUMA Energy took over management of the grid in 2021 from the government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA. Genra PR is in charge of energy production and initiated operations in 2023.
Still, the challenges remain. After Hurricane Ernesto in August, about half of all electric customers on the island were at one point without power, according to LUMA Energy.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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