“While the vast majority of customers have recovered, the risk of intermittent power outages may arise as a complex full recovery process progresses,” the utility said. The outage began as a blackout across the island that closed schools and courts for days and caused further outages for the 3.2 million residents of the US territory. Pointing to the recent progress of the restoration, LUMA said on Saturday that it was possible for electricity to reach other customers by Sunday and crews were working all night. However, the electricity company urged customers to save electricity whenever possible to help reduce demand and help complete recovery. The mass shutdown began around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday when an unspecified fault led to a fire at the Costa Sur substation, said Kevin Acevedo, vice president of LUMA Energy. Firefighters have since extinguished the blaze at a facility outside Guayanilla on the southwest coast. The exact cause was not immediately known, the utility said. Initially, all customers lost power “because all production units were disconnected”, according to Josué Colón, the island’s chief telecommunications and infrastructure engineer. In addition to power outages, the outage also cut off water to tens of thousands of homes and businesses, said Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluizi, who cited the island’s aqueduct and sewer authority. Schools across the island also canceled classes for students on Thursday and Friday, although principals, guardians and school cafeteria staff were called to show up for work on Friday, the island’s education department said. As of Thursday afternoon, all the hospitals were operating either by restoration of electricity or by generators, said Interior Minister Noelia García Bardales.
The causes of the fire are being investigated
As the lights go on in other homes and businesses, little is known about what caused the fire that plunged the island into darkness. “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 utility company said on Thursday that the “massive blackout across the island” may have been “caused by a circuit breaker failure” at the Costa Sur plant. Acevento, vice president of LUMA, said the cause of the fire remained under investigation, noting that the equipment was up to date with maintenance inspections. Spare parts have been ordered for the power plant and clean-up efforts have been under way, Acevendo added. 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 Jason Hanna, Rafy Rivera and Michelle Watson contributed to this report.
