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Puerto Rico's Power Grid has Collapsed [1]
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Date: 2024-12-31
This New Year’s Eve, about 90% of Puerto Rico’s population will be without power, following a collapse of the power grid. From CNN:
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.
Power outages are nothing new in Puerto Rico. They have been waiting decades for modernization to their fragile grid. And lately it seems that after every major storm or hurricane, there are serious outages.
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.
It’s time to end the treatment of Puerto Rico as some sort of neglected stepchild. Imagine if this happened in Alabama or Connecticut? Why should Puerto Rico be treated any differently?
Alas, I do not have the answers.
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