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About 58% of Puerto Rico has has had power restored following an island-wide blackout on Wednesday, the government of Puerto Rico federal affairs administration said on Thursday.
It added that current generation stands at 1,439MW. A total of 31 generation units are online, with 16 additional units in the process of being brought back online, it said.
In an update reported by CBS on Thursday, the Puerto Rican Luma Energy company said: “Preliminary analysis points to a failure in the protection system as the initial trigger, followed by the presence of vegetation on a transmission line between Cambalache and Manatí.”
It added: “This sequence of failures triggered a chain of events that resulted in an island-wide outage.”
The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, issued a statement on X on Thursday, saying that the department is “monitoring the situation in Puerto Rico as the island continues to make progress on restoring power to its residents. We are in communication with Gov [Jenniffer] González-Colón and are standing by to provide assistance if necessary.”
He added: “Unleashing affordable, reliable and secure energy for all Americans is a top priority for this administration. We are actively working with Gov González-Colón to strengthen Puerto Rico’s grid and restore stability for the Puerto Rican people.”
Echoing Wright’s statements on Thursday, González-Colón said that Puerto Rico “needs a modern, reliable grid and we will hold all stakeholders accountable to ensure meaningful progress”.
According to González-Colón, an outage like Wednesday’s leads to approximately $230m in revenue loss daily, the Associated Press reported.
This is just the latest in a series of massive blackouts that left residents in the dark in the US island territory since much of the grid had to be rebuilt after being destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017, including, most recently, on New Year’s Eve.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Ramón C Barquín III, president of the United Retail Center, a non-profit representing small and medium-sized businesses, complained about the repeated blackouts.
“We cannot continue to repeat this cycle of blackouts without taking concrete measures to strengthen our energy infrastructure,” he told the Associated Press.
Videos posted online showed passengers on Puerto Rico’s public transit walking along trains that had ground to a halt as a result of the blackout.
Meanwhile, 50-year-old Dorca Navarrete, a house cleaner, told the Associated Press that she was unable to sleep because it was too hot during the blackout.
“Last night was horrible,” she told the outlet, adding: “I woke up with a headache.”
“As part of our response efforts, we are investigating the cause of this incident, including what role and effect the long-recognized impact of the fragility of the system had on this island-wide outage,” Luma Energy said.
Luma Energy is a joint venture between units of the Canadian energy firm Atco and the US construction and engineering firm Quanta Services.
