A blackout that occurred at about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday night has kept much of Puerto Rico in the dark, with residents reliving Hurricane Maria scenarios where the sound of generators, the scorching heat and concern for lack of essential services were rising Friday.
Wayne Stensby, president and chief executive officer of LUMA Energy, the company that in June 2021 took over the reins of the transmission and redistribution of energy on the island, said the company believes the blackout was caused by a fire in a breaker in a plant in Guayanilla at the southern area of the island. It made the plant go out of service and, consequently, the network protection system was activated and turned off the other generators.
Around noon Friday, LUMA Energy consortium reported that about 660,000 or about 45%, of all subscribers had energy. That number hadn’t changed since it was reported at 6 a.m.
In addition, 154,862 customers — out of a total of 1.3 million — were without water service due to the blackout.
LUMA Energy’s vice president, Kevin Acevedo, said he was “confident” that by Friday night over a million customers would have electricity service.
But for many Puerto Ricans such María Nogueras, who reached out to El Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel's Spanish-language edition, that sounded like an empty promise.
She said that when the blackout happened “there was barely any information. Since yesterday they have been saying that ‘by tonight’ we will have power. Tonight has passed and we are in the same situation almost 48 hours later.”
She said she lives in Cayey, where “the majority are elderly people. I am alone, disabled with back problems too.”
Although she has a small generator she bought with the federal assistance money she got during the pandemic, having to put gas on it and turning it on “is hard. I can’t have it on too long either, I just maintain the fridge on. But it is not only hard, it’s expensive with gas prices, too.”
Nogueras said local officials have not done much to help those in need like the cancer patients and other people confined to their beds on her street.
This September marks five years since Hurricane Maria destroyed most of the island’s electrical grid.
Noguera says “there’s no excuse” for the system to be in such a “terrible state. This government has gotten a lot of federal help ... to keep things going. They have not done anything with it. This is a mess.”
LUMA officials said that they expect the restoration of electricity to continue Saturday.
Puerto Rico’s power generation units average 45 years old, twice those of the U.S. mainland, and LUMA is expected to spend about $3.85 billion through fiscal year 2024 to upgrade the grid’s transmission and distribution system.
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