Puerto Rico just lost power yet again in total blackout

Shelby Fleig | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Puerto Rico hit with island-wide blackout The island was hit by yet another blackout after an excavator accidentally took down a transmission line.

Puerto Rico lost power again Wednesday when a toppled transmission line caused a total blackout, the most recent outcome of the island’s aged power infrastructure struggling to recover after Hurricane Maria.

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, tweeted about the island-wide power outage just before 10 a.m. It could take as long as 36 hours to restore electricity to everyone, according to PREPA, the highly indebted company that generates and delivers all public power on the island.

Hospitals, banks and the San Juan airport will get priority before power is back on in homes and businesses, the company said. This widespread outage follows many other smaller blackouts in Puerto Rico since the catastrophic hurricane in September. Last week, half the island lost power when a tree fell on a power line.

PREPA’s interim director Justo González said Wednesday that Cobra Energy, a U.S. private contractor, hit the transmission line with a crane, as reported in El Nuevo Dia. The same company caused the big outage last week, the newspaper says.

Lionel Orama, an electrical engineer and University of Puerto Rico professor, said what most likely happened is that two main power plants, AES and Aguirre, immediately unplugged from the power system to protect their large generators after the transmission line was toppled. That sudden loss of power transmission, he said, then makes it impossible for substations to keep running.

“That is a huge transmission line that connects both plants,” Orama said. “The problem is both plants (in the south half) were delivering power to the north half of the island. Whenever there’s a huge outage from one of them, especially Augerrie, the system is in danger to go out completely.”

Marla Pérez, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico, said she was working from her home in Mayagüez, on the island’s far west side, when the power suddenly went out. Pérez and Orama are members of the university's National Institute for Island Energy and Sustainability.

“Everything went silent,” Perez said. “My first thought was here we go again.” She said she knew it wasn’t just her home once she heard her neighbor’s generator kick on and started to smell the machine's diesel fuel. One traffic light in her town is still working somehow, she added.

“This is the second blackout in less than a week,” she said. “The service is not reliable.”

Tens of thousands of people have not had electricity since the massive storm seven months ago.

“This is all very worrisome, obviously, as we approach another hurricane season,” said Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “The grid is so fragile and they’re just barely able to get the lights back on.”

With a debt of $9 billion, PREPA filed for a form of bankruptcy last year. Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is pushing a bill to privatize the power system. The island's legislature held public hearings this week.

“Until PREPA is back on a more stable financial footing, it seems like they are continuing to have major problems with reliability,” said Kunkel, who served as an expert witness in several proceedings regarding Puerto Rico's energy system. “It’s very worrisome.”