Puerto Rico again under total blackout

System is still fragile as hurricane season nears

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

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority tweeted about the islandwide 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 comes after 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 Gonzalez 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.

Marla Perez, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico, said she was working from her home in Mayaguez, on the island’s far west side, when the power suddenly went out. Perez 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. This is the second blackout in less than a week. The service is not reliable.”

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