New Year’s Eve: a complete power outage on one of the islands

A serious malfunction in Puerto Rico’s power grid has caused widespread power outages affecting much of the island, according to a post on Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi’s X account.

The New Year’s Eve power outage began Tuesday morning at 5:30 a.m., according to LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American energy company responsible for distributing and transmitting power on the island.

The outage initially caused power outages to approximately 90% of customers. As of 9 p.m. ET, just over 765,000 users, or more than 50% of customers, were still without power, but service had been restored at hospitals and other major facilities, including the Water and Sewer Authority, the company said. .

“We can report that work is already underway to restore service with the San Juan and Palo Seco stations,” Pierluisi said.

The energy company said that while the cause of the outage is still under investigation, there appears to be a problem with an underground line.

Loma Energy’s Emergency Operations Center is working to restore the electrical system and power to the island as quickly as possible, the company said.

The company added that the complete restoration process will take about one or two days.

Residents expressed their dissatisfaction with the outages yesterday, ahead of the 2025 celebrations.

This power outage is the latest time Puerto Rico’s inconsistent power system has faltered on a large scale.

Power outages on the island have been a long-standing source of frustration for Puerto Ricans who rely on a fragile and poorly maintained electricity grid, with modernization efforts slowing over several decades, first by a publicly owned entity and today by a private entity.

The grid collapse in 2017 after Hurricane Maria left hundreds of thousands of people without power for months. The outage was considered the largest outage in US history in terms of the total number of power hours lost.

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 responsible for the energy production and began operations in 2023.

However, challenges remain. After Hurricane Ernesto in August, about half of the island’s electricity customers were without power at some point, according to LUMA Energy.