Power outage hits 330K in Puerto Rico amid growing outrage
A sudden power failure left more than 330,000 clients in the dark across Puerto Rico late Wednesday, enraging many who were recovering from a massive outage that hit the US territory just days ago.
Luma Energy, a private company that took over the islands power transmission and distribution system on June 1, said three units were knocked offline for reasons not immediately known. At first, the company said some 190,000 clients had been affected, but it later tweeted that power had been restored to more than 180,000 clients and that another 156,700 were still without electricity. Various spokeswomen did not return calls for comment.
The latest outage unleashed a flood of complaints on social media as anger spread among thousands of people who were forced to throw out food and refrigerated medication including insulin in recent days. Some also complained about damaged appliances as lights flickered on and off since Thursdays outage that left 900,000 people in the dark.
Wednesdays outage came just hours after Luma warned that services would be interrupted nightly for the next three days given pre-scheduled maintenance at one plant and interruptions in the generation of power run by Puerto Ricos Electric Power Authority. The most recent outage is not related to the upcoming interruptions in service, Luma said.
Its the latest challenge to hit a company that has come under scrutiny amid high expectations that it would briskly solve problems despite having to rely on aging infrastructure and a fragile power grid that has not been strengthened since Hurricane Maria razed it in 2017 as a Category 4 storm, leaving some clients without power for up to a year.
Victoria Perez, who lives in the capital of San Juan, said power in her neighborhood of RÃo Piedras usually goes out two to three times a week, but that outages have recently worsened. She and her family already had spent two days without electricity when Thursdays massive outage hit, adding that they have had to adjust their budget and buy gasoline to keep their generator going.
These days its been running like its Maria all over again, she said. The entire neighbourhood is noisy. The outages have been so constant lately that several mayors have declared states of emergency and handed out generators and ice to those most in need, as well as hired private crews to restore power after saying that Luma informed them they lacked enough brigades.
Earlier Wednesday, Luma said it was still probing what caused a large fire at a main substation that led to Thursdays outage, adding that the investigation wont be finalized for another four to six weeks.
Luma is a consortium made up of Calgary, Alberta-based Atco and Quanta Services Inc of Houston. It serves 1.5 million clients as part of a 15-year contract with Puerto Ricos government, which remains the owner and operator of the islands power generators.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)
