Get 40% Off
🤯 This Tech Portfolio is up 29% YTD! Join Now to Get April’s Top PicksGet The Picks – Just 99 USD

Puerto Rico restores power to over 70 percent of customers after blackout

Published 04/19/2018, 11:31 AM
Updated 04/19/2018, 11:31 AM
© Reuters. A driver drives a car along the street in San Juan

© Reuters. A driver drives a car along the street in San Juan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Puerto Rico's power company said it had restored power to over 1.1 million homes and businesses by Thursday morning after a transmission line failure cut service to almost all of the island's 3.4 million residents the day before.

The Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, was working to restore power to the less than 30 percent of customers in the U.S. territory still without power after Wednesday morning's blackout.

The power line failure in southern Puerto Rico was the latest in a string of operational and political headaches for the bankrupt, storm-ravaged power utility.

The utility has struggled to escape the headlines since Hurricane Maria wiped out power to all of Puerto Rico on Sept. 20.

Maria, the worst storm to hit the island in 90 years, devastated Puerto Rico's electrical grid, and thousands were still without power at the time of Wednesday's blackout.

PREPA said on Twitter that several power plants were back in service, including units at Central Aguirre, EcoElectrica, Central Costa Sur, Yabucoa and Palo Seco.

The blackout was caused by the failure of a 230-kilovolt transmission line between the oil-fired Aguirre generating complex in Salinas and AES Corp's (N:AES) coal-fired power plant in Guayama, PREPA said in a statement on Wednesday.

PREPA estimated on Wednesday that it would take 24 to 36 hours to restore service to all customers that had power before Wednesday's blackout.

Before the outage, PREPA said 1.43 million homes and businesses had electric service. That is 97.2 percent of the utility's 1.47 million total customers. (For a graphic, see: http://tmsnrt.rs/2jYDF9s)

Many of the remaining 40,000 customers have been without power since Hurricane Maria.

© Reuters. A driver drives a car along the street in San Juan

PREPA has suffered several blackouts since the storm, including an outage last week affecting about 870,000 customers, and has been in bankruptcy since July, owing some $9 billion to mutual funds, hedge funds and other investors.

Latest comments

Risk Disclosure: Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers.
© 2007-2024 - Fusion Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.