That leaves about 800,000 to 850,000 homes and businesses without power in a two-day school shutdown and another outage for Puerto Rico’s 3.2 million residents. “Hopefully at some point tonight, we will be able to have 1 million customers online again. It depends on security – for the system, for the employees and for the community,” Kevin Acevedo, LUMA Energy vice president, told reporters. in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s power grid operator. An unspecified fault led to a fire at a power plant on the Costa Sur off the southwest coastal city of Guyanilla at around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, cutting off power to the entire island, Acevendo said. Since then, firefighters have extinguished the flames. All customers on the island initially lost power, Josue Colon, Puerto Rico’s chief telecommunications and infrastructure engineer, told reporters Thursday, “because all the plants went offline.” The exact cause was not immediately known, the utility said. “Every single piece of equipment (at the factory switchboard) needs to be inspected and tested to make sure that when it is put back into operation, we can restore power to customers reliably and safely,” said Shay Bahramirad, Senior Vice President of LUMA Energy. engineering and asset management, he told reporters in San Juan on Friday. The power outage has also cut off water supplies to tens of thousands of homes and businesses, Governor Pedro Pierluizi said, citing the island’s aqueduct and sewer authority. Puerto Rico canceled classes for students for a second day in a row on Friday. However, school principals, guardians and school cafeteria staff were called to the scene on Friday, the island’s education department said. The island’s courts were also closed due to the shutdown, although some court services will be available online for urgent matters such as mental health and restrictive measures, the district justice system said. All the hospitals operated until Thursday afternoon, whether the electricity was restored or operated via a generator, according to Interior Minister Noelia García Bardales.
Spare parts for a power plant were ordered, the official said
Early Thursday, the utility service said the “massive power outage across the island” may have been “caused by a circuit breaker failure” at the Costa Sur plant. Firefighters extinguished the flames that hit two substations at the factory, the Puerto Rican Fire Department said on Wednesday. The cause of the fire is being investigated, Acevendo said Thursday morning, adding that the equipment was up to date in maintenance inspections. Cleaning at the plant is ongoing and spare parts have been located and ordered, Acevedo said. LUMA is a joint venture between Quanta Services and Canadian energy company ATCO, which the Puerto Rican government has chosen to run its electricity grid from its former public utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. LUMA is responsible for the electricity network from June 1. CNN’s Rafy Rivera, Stefano Pozzebon and Michelle Watson contributed to this report.
