December 31st 2024.
According to a recent post on Governor Pedro Pierluisi's social media account, there has been a major disruption in the power grid of Puerto Rico. This has resulted in a widespread blackout that has affected a significant portion of the island. The incident occurred on New Year's Eve at 5:30am, as reported by LUMA Energy, the company responsible for power distribution and transmission in Puerto Rico.
Initially, the blackout left almost 90% of customers without electricity. As the day progressed, the number of affected users decreased, but over 1.2 million customers were still without power by noon. Governor Pierluisi has assured the public that efforts are already underway to restore service, particularly at the San Juan and Palo Seco plants.
In his statement, Governor Pierluisi also expressed his frustration and demanded swift action from both Luma and Genera, the companies responsible for managing the power grid. He urged them to prioritize the restart of the generating units and keep the public informed about their progress in restoring power to the entire island. Luma Energy's Emergency Operations Center is currently collaborating with Genera and other power companies to expedite the process and bring back electricity to Puerto Rico as soon as possible.
The outage, which occurred just before the New Year's celebrations, has caused great distress among the residents. One resident, Sonia Arroyo, shared her frustration with CNN en Español, stating, "Complete frustration, disappointment with the government, with the institutions, with everything." Liz Rebeca Aponte, another resident, also expressed her concerns about the country's development, saying, "I am more concerned about the development of this country than about the party." She emphasized the need to improve the power grid to attract investments and strengthen industries like the pharmaceutical industry.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Puerto Rico has faced such a major power outage. The island's power system has long been a source of frustration for its residents due to its fragility and poor maintenance. Despite efforts to modernize the grid over the years, progress has been slow. In 2017, Hurricane Maria caused a widespread power outage that left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity for months. It 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 (FEMA) has allocated $9.9 billion for permanent projects to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Maria. In 2021, Luma Energy took over management of the grid from the government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), and in 2023, Genra PR started operations as the energy production company. However, as seen in the recent incident after Hurricane Ernesto, the challenges in maintaining a stable and reliable power grid in Puerto Rico still persist. At one point, half of the island's electric customers were without power, highlighting the need for continuous improvement and modernization of the power system.
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