More than half of Puerto Rico remained without electricity early on Wednesday after a sweeping power outage on New Year’s Eve.
Luma Energy, the private energy company primarily supplying power to the island, reported as of 10.45am on Tuesday morning that only 13.5% of the US territory’s customers had power.
As of 11pm, power had been restored to 48% of customers, Luma said in an update late on Tuesday. It had earlier said it believed “a failure in an underground line” was responsible for the outage and estimated it would take between 24 and 48 hours to restore power.
Puerto Rico’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, posted on X that his office was in contact with Luma and “demanding answers and solutions” from the company. He also said he had been in contact with US President Joe Biden and energy secretary Jennifer Granholm during the day.
Jeanette Ortiz, who lives in San Juan, was planning to invite a number of family members to her home to celebrate the new year. Ortiz’s plans were derailed, but the back-up generator at her home is helping her and her family power through the blackout to celebrate the end of 2024.
“With the generator, we can’t use a stove, a blower, a microwave, things like that,” Ortiz told the Guardian.
Some of her family members, who live in a not-so-safe neighborhood, might have to leave their festivities early to head home, Ortiz added, to avoid traversing through dark roads with no working lights.
“We’re closing the year with a golden seal with this blackout,” Ortiz said. The weather on Tuesday was cooler than most days, she added, so the lack of air conditioning has not been as bad as during previous blackouts.
Puerto Ricans have been accustomed to frequent blackouts, which have worsened after Hurricane Maria in 2017 severely damaged the island. There was another blackout in June affecting about 350,000 customers on the island.
The New Year’s Eve outage appears to be significantly bigger than the previous blackout.
Jenaro Abraham, an associate professor at Gonzaga University and a member of the social democratic Puerto Rican Independence party, has family members living on the island.
“It’s been a very tough few years for Puerto Ricans, and these are some of the few moments Puerto Ricans can escape from reality and be with family and friends and be thankful for all the wonderful things you still have – and then all of a sudden the blackout happens,” Abraham said.
The blackouts and the island’s power grid problems have also become a source of political tension for Puerto Ricans.
Abraham said: “This emanates from a structural crisis that Puerto Rico is experiencing from US colonial rule.”
In 2016, an Obama-era federal law instituted significant changes for Puerto Rico to address the island’s crippling debt. The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (Promesa) board, in charge of policy changes on the island, recommended the privatization of the publicly owned electric grid, known as the Puerto Rico Power Authority (Prepa).
After the 2017 hurricane took out the electric grid, the island’s then governor announced the sale of Prepa and the privatization the energy distribution network.
“[The privatization of Prepa] managed to prop up very predatory actors like Luma, a company based in the United States, where they basically thrive off of Puerto Rico’s vulnerability,” Abraham said.
“ It’s definitely a source of much contention and much anger among Puerto Ricans, because Puerto Ricans felt that they never chose Luma, they never chose the fiscal oversight board, they didn’t vote for any of these things.”
Ortiz said: “The blackouts have been worse. People have been angry for a while now. This is just what we needed to end the year.”
The incoming governor, Jenniffer González-Colón, who is set to be sworn in on 2 January, plans to name an “energy czar” to review the contract with Luma and search for another power grid operator, per the Associated Press.
