Puerto Rico’s Massive Power Outage Drags On Into Third Day

(Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans remained without electricity for a third day Friday, shuttering schools and government offices, as questions swirled about what caused the island-wide blackout.

At a press conference, grid operator Luma Energy said power had been restored to more than 600,000 of the island’s 1.4 million clients and that at least 1 million would be online by the end of the night Friday. But company officials refused to estimate when power would be fully restored to the U.S. commonwealth, saying it depends on a series of interlocking repairs and power-plant restarts that were difficult to predict. 

The length of the outage is also affecting other utilities. The island’s aqueduct authority said some 160,000 households were without water and Puerto Rico’s Telecommunication’s Bureau said island-wide connectivity was at about 73% of normal levels, citing network tracking site NetBlocker.

What remains unclear is what happened Wednesday night to trigger the massive blackout. While Luma officials say the incident began when a circuit-breaker attached to the Costa Sur power plant caught fire, they are still investigating how that incident triggered the shutdown all of the island’s power plants.

“This type of breakdown in our system is unacceptable and I will not rest until we achieve the goal of modernizing and replacing our old and outdated electrical system,” Governor Pedro Pierluisi wrote on Twitter.

Shay Bahramirad, the senior vice president for engineering at Luma, said the system overall is “fragile” and “obsolete,” includes the emergency shutdown infrastructure. 

“We have been changing the protection philosophy -- and how all this equipment has to react at the time of an event -- to make sure that events like this are isolated and do not cascade across the entire island,” she said at a press conference.  

Read More: Puerto Rico Power Slowly Being Restored After Massive Outage (2)

Luma -- a consortium of Atco Ltd. and Quanta Services Inc. working with Innovative Emergency Management Inc -- took over grid management from the bankrupt Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority in June. At the time, Luma and government officials said the company was well positioned to tap some $9.5 billion in federal money to repair the notoriously aging and ailing system. 

On Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said that it had not received any requests to evaluate transmission and distribution projects that Luma would be responsible for.

Bahramirad disputed that claim, saying Luma had presented 180 preliminary projects to FEMA and that construction on the first fully funded one -- while not fully approved -- “will begin in a few months.”

A FEMA spokesperson said they couldn’t immediately explain the discrepancy. 

But the issue is giving longtime Luma critics additional ammunition. 

“We must find out why they have not moved forward on rebuilding projects when the money is available,” said Luis Raul Torres, a member of Puerto Rico’s legislature who has been campaigning to cancel Luma’s 15-year contract. “This seems to me like gross negligence.”

(Includes comments from Luma press conference starting in 2nd paragraph)

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