By EFE
Sep 12, 2024, 07:39 AM EDT
San Juan – More than 140,000 electricity customers in Puerto Rico were affected by a power outage on Wednesday afternoon, after two units of the EcoEléctrica cogenerator and the AES thermoelectric plant went out of service, as well as repair and maintenance work at GeneraPR power plants.
According to data from the website of Luma Energy, in charge of the transmission and distribution of electric power in Puerto Rico, at 18:30 local time (22:00 GMT) 143,546 customers were without power, mostly in the municipalities of Caguas (around 32,000), Arecibo (over 32,600), and Bayamón (over 25,000), all located in the north of the Caribbean island.
Two units of the EcoEléctrica cogenerator went out of service at 9:23 in the morning (13:23 GMT) because the interconnection with the transmission network, through the 230kV line 51100, went out of service due to the activation of a protection system and caused the departure of units CT#2 and STG.
Likewise, the AES thermoelectric plant, in the southern municipality of Guayama, reported through its social networks that unit 2 “was removed from the system to address a breakdown.”
On the other hand, GeneraPR has out of service units 6 of the San Juan plant, 2 of the Aguirre de Salinas plant, in the south of the island, and 4 of Palo Seco (Toa Baja, in the north of the island), which have a capacity of around 900 MW.
This is part of the restoration process following the passage of Hurricane Ernesto, which left more than a million people without electricity in mid-August.
The constant power outages that have occurred on the island since Luma began working in Puerto Rico in June 2021 and the increases in the bill despite the power outages are some of the causes that have generated discontent among the Puerto Rican population and towards the company.
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