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.
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.
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.
"customers" not people
Like people choose to have power to their house.
It should be a human right.
In this case, "customers" may be more precise, bc if like a whole family has one account that's only one customer, but perhaps representing 5+ people affected?
And a business could be even worse, affecting >10 people.
You are accurate from a buisness perspective. Though, they would not be referred to this way if they were on the mainland and would be handled more urgently.
Terrible to see for Puerto Rico.
Is the Biden administration going do anything about this before Trump takes over and ignores our territory.
No, but Trump will come over and throw some paper towels again, so that will be nice.
I know you're just trying to make a funny but he did actually call them and offer support.
President Joe Biden spoke with Pierluisi on Tuesday evening about the outage and offered federal assistance. Biden also spoke with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and directed her to offer any help needed to speed power restoration on the island.
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/31/nx-s1-5243984/puerto-rico-power-outage-blackout-new-years-eve
Biden called the governor and offered federal aid.