Puerto Rico’s Power Restored After Massive Outage – Find Out How It Happened

Service has been restored to almost all affected customers after a significant power grid failure left certain parts of Puerto Rico without electricity for the start of the new year. LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American corporation that maintains the transmission towers and electricity lines around the island, said Wednesday morning that about 1.4 million subscribers, or at least 98% of the total, had service. The severe blackout, which started early on New Year’s Eve, brought attention to Puerto Rico’s deteriorating electrical grid’s long-standing problems.

President Joe Biden and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm reaffirmed the federal government’s “commitment to assist Puerto Rico in continuing and speeding up the reconstruction,” according to a post made by Governor Pedro Pierluisi on X on Wednesday of the electric system.” Jenniffer González-Colón, the governor-elect of Puerto Rico, who will take office on Thursday, stated she was in contact with her energy and security staff to make sure the restoration of electricity is done quickly, safely, and with coordination.

The original interruption seemed to have been caused by a problem with an underground wire, but the source of the blackout is still being investigated, according to LUMA. The enormous blackout was also linked to long-standing structural problems with distribution and generating. According to Josue Colon, CEO of the Puerto Rico Power Authority, a transmission and distribution system failure set off a chain of events that ultimately resulted in the cessation of operations for all of the generating units.

The Puerto Rico Power Authority is a government-owned company that manages all of the island’s transmission, distribution, and energy generation assets. Genera has been in charge of energy production operations since 2023, and LUMA has been in charge of managing the electricity grid since 2021.

The electricity system in Puerto Rico has recently experienced widespread failures, most recently the New Year’s Eve outage. For months in 2017, Hurricane Maria left hundreds of thousands without electricity. Due to Hurricane Ernesto, over half of the island’s electric consumers experienced power outages at one point last year, according to LUMA Energy.