Another outage leaves 150,000 customers without power in Puerto Rico

San Juan, Jun 16 (EFE).- Private electricity company LUMA Energy, which took over power transmission and distribution in Puerto Rico on June 1, reported a breakdown on Wednesday that has left about 150,000 customers without power, almost a week after a fire at a substation left about 900,000 customers in the dark.

The company said on social media that the latest outage was caused by a breakdown in Unit 6 of the South Coast plant.

“South Coast Unit 6 went out of service in an unplanned manner. It is estimated that we have 150,000 customers without service as a result of this event,” the company said on Twitter.

Affected cities include Carolina, Gurabo, Toa Baja, Caguas, Cataño and Bayamón.

Prior to the breakdown, LUMA Energy had announced that there would be limited generation capacity in the system during the next three days due to “unplanned outages” at the Electric Power Authority’s (AEE) generation facilities and ongoing planned maintenance at the AES Guayama and other AEE generation plants.

It said that customers could experience outages in the event that the load exceeded the available generating capacity.

LUMA Energy took over the transmission and distribution of electricity in Puerto Rico, previously in the hands of the state-owned AEE, which led to protests as employees of the state-owned company were moved to the private firm under agreements with the government and its agencies.

In these 16 days, the island has suffered blackouts of various kinds that have affected almost a million customers and there has been a cyberattack on the company’s website.

There has been some public opposition to the takeover from the loss-making AEE by LUMA Energy, a newly-formed company owned jointly by Canadian Utilities Limited, an ATCO company, and the American Quanta Services. EFE

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