An underground cable that had been out of commission for a long time failed, causing the islandwide blackout on New Year’s Eve, according to a statement released on Friday by Luma Energy, the firm responsible for Puerto Rico’s power transmission and distribution system.
According to the Puerto Rican national newspaper El Nuevo D’a, Juan Rodriguez, vice president of capital projects at Luma Energy, stated that the cable is so old that the business that made it shut down 25 years ago. They are currently looking into how precisely that cable caused the blackout, he continued.
Residents of Puerto Rico expressed their annoyance and anger as half of the island remained without power on New Year’s Day, coinciding with a recent spike in electricity prices linked to growing fuel prices.
Because of an outdated and patched-up electrical grid, Puerto Ricans, who already pay twice as much for electricity as people on the U.S. mainland, are also paying more for erratic service.
Hurricane Maria devastated the grid in 2017, and it hasn’t been fully restored. As distribution connections fail to carry electricity and old fossil fuel facilities continue to operate well past their useful lives to power the system, it remains fragile and prone to failure. These have led to lengthier and more frequent power disruptions.
The grid took forty years to construct. Sergio Marxuach, policy director of the Puerto Rico-based think group Center For A New Economy, told NBC News that Hurricane Maria destroyed everything in a single day. “I’m not saying it will take 40 more years to fix it, but the magnitude of the work we have to do is huge.”
Exactly five years after Maria, Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico in 2022. According to departing U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, since then, the U.S. territory has had more than 200 outages because of a lack of backup energy infrastructure in case the grid fails.
“Band-Aid solutions aren’t going to cut it,” Granholm stated during a press conference held Friday morning in Puerto Rico. “Progress is being made and more progress needs to be made.”
Granholm stated that under President Joe Biden, “the ground has been set” to upgrade Puerto Rico’s grid and make the switch to renewable energy, even if the incoming government of President-elect Donald Trump will bear the brunt of the work ahead.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing the majority of the $17 billion allotted for the electrical grid’s reconstruction. About $6 billion, or little more than a third of that total, has been allocated to more than 200 grid-improvement projects. According to Granholm, at least 125 of those are now being built in collaboration with Genera PR, the private business responsible for electricity generation, and Luma Energy.
According to the secretary, her office helped Puerto Rico meet municipal regulations aimed at achieving 100% renewable electricity by 2050. Puerto Rico’s ability to produce electricity from renewable sources grew from less than 4% to 6% under the Biden administration.
However, there are still many obstacles to overcome as Puerto Rican officials attempt to balance the grid’s long-term rehabilitation and switch to renewable energy sources with immediate fixes to stabilize electrical services.
Puerto Rico’s NewIn her campaign, Governor Jenniffer González pledged to address the problem that has been ailing the U.S. territory. González appointed engineer Josu Coln as the new energy czar in one of her first actions as president. In addition to being the director of the Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority, Col. will be the lead person responsible for organizing the massive task of rebuilding and repairing the electricity grid.
“It’s still unclear what kind of budget and resources will be provided to Col n,” noted Marxuach, director of the think group.
According to Marxuach, the primary focus should continue to be on short-term grid stabilization and outage reduction. To do this, the grid must be expanded to include more energy sources. In order to supply temporary electricity in the event of a grid failure, Genera PR and Luma Energy intend to deploy more electric backup units. In the upcoming 18 months, they also intend to repair a number of substations and build new electrical transformers.
The DOE “added 350 megawatts of temporary generation to provide additional backups, but we need to do more,” Granholm stated.
For Puerto Rico to have dependable electricity in the long run, the grid must ultimately be completely rebuilt. During Trump’s first term as president, that process began. After that, the administration infamously stopped aid from reaching Puerto Rico and imposed new conditions that delayed the distribution of reconstruction cash. If Trump is elected president again, it is unclear if any of these policies will be reinstated.
According to Marxuach, a number of factors “have converged so that we will continue, in 2025, to have a system that is still fragile.”