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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 began Tuesday morning at 5:30 a.m., according
to LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American power company responsible for power distribution and transmission on the island. The outage initially knocked
out power to nearly 90% of customers. By noon over 1.2 million users, or
more than 80% of customers, were still without power, the company said.

“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, the company said. The full restoration
process will take about a day or two, the company added.

Residents expressed their displeasure with the outages on Tuesday ahead of
2025 celebrations.

“Complete frustration,” Sonia Arroyo, a resident of Vega Alta outside of
San Juan, told CNN en Español. “Frustration, disappointment with the government, with the institutions, with everything.”

“I am more concerned about the development of this country than about the party,” said Liz Rebeca Aponte of Dorado. “Here we work in the
pharmaceutical industry, and industries that want to invest in the country
will not come here if we do not improve the structure.”

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 Maria.
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.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/31/us/puerto-rico-power-outage/index.html

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