Puerto Rico plunges into darkness as power outage hits more than 1.3 million customers on New Year's Eve
Puerto Rico plunges into darkness as power outage hits more than 1.3 million customers on New Year's Eve
Power outages are a frustratingly frequent occurrence for many Puerto Ricans. A string of blackouts during the summer prompted protests and a state of emergency.
Summary
Puerto Rico’s latest power outage has left over 1.3 million customers without power on New Year's Eve.
The outage is attributed to an infrastructure problem at a power plant on the island's southern coast.
LUMA, the energy company, is working to restore power in phases, but it may take up to 48 hours.
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Customers?
Of course the colony has a private energy grid
After hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 LUMA was developed. It is a partnership between ATCO (Canada) and Quanta Services Inc (USA) to develop and modernize Puerto Rico's electrical grid over a 15-year contract. (source)
As such it is a privately-owned grid, not unlike dozens of others in the US. The only difference is that Puerto Rico does NOT receive any federal funds to help offset the costs of the upgrades ... the citizens pay every cent themselves to those privately-owned companies.
What power grids receive public funds for upgrades? Even my public grid on the mainland is funded entirely by my municipality and state.
It was privatized under Trump after all the rolling blackouts the public grid kept having. So far it has actually rather improved in quality somehow.