“Why don’t we have electricity?”
AGUADILLA, PUERTO RICO» Four years after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico’s electrical grid a shambles and the entire island in the dark, residents had expected their fragile power system to be stronger now. Instead, unreliable electricity remains frustratingly common, hindering economic development and daily life.
In June, a private consortium known as LUMA Energy took over the transmission and distribution of electricity. And yet the situation has only worsened. Surging demand has led to rolling blackouts affecting a majority of the island’s 1.5 million electrical customers.
Last week, several thousand people marched along a main highway in San Juan, the capital, blocking traffic with the latest in a series of protests over the seemingly unending electricity problems plaguing the island.
“The people can’t take it anymore,” said Iris Delia Matos Rivera, 69, a former employee of the island’s long-standing electrical utility who attended a recent demonstration.
Many Puerto Ricans are diabetic and need refrigerated insulin to survive. The pandemic also has put some people on respiratory therapies requiring electrical power at home for oxygen machines. Some Puerto Ricans are still studying or working at home.
Ashlee Vega, who lives in northwestern Puerto Rico, said the power fluctuations this month were so imperceptible that it took her several hours to realize her appliances were not working right. The new refrigerator she had bought in February — to replace an old one that gave out after enduring years of volatile electrical surges — was fried.
Her mother lent her a big cooler. In went the milk and eggs, the ham and cheese. Vegetables spoiled. Twice a day for the next five days, until a repairman got her fridge working, she hustled to gas stations for ice.
There was little to be had at first because a spate of power outages had also left her neighbors scrambling.
“I can’t have that happen again,” said Vega, 31, an Army veteran who returned last year to Aguadilla, her hometown. “That’s not something that should be happening. We’re in 2021. We have internet on our TV. Why don’t we have electricity?”
Behind the failures are the same problems that have plagued Puerto Rico’s grid for decades: aging equipment, lack of maintenance and past mismanagement and corruption of an inefficient system.
The bankrupt public utility, which is still in charge of power generation, declared an emergency this month to try to hasten critical repairs to its ailing plants. Electricity rates, which are higher in Puerto Rico than in almost all of the 50 states, have continued to rise, even as service has deteriorated.
Privatizing transmission and distribution — the part of the power system most damaged by Maria — has led to new challenges, including public distrust and the retirement or redeployment of experienced line workers who knew how to deal with the island’s outdated infrastructure.
The system is so frail that a power plant recently went offline because seaweed blocked its filters.
The inability of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, and the new private Canadian-american consortium to provide consistent power has led to weeks of finger-pointing, tense legislative hearings and growing protests by fed-up residents.
Crews patched Puerto Rico’s grid with $3.2 billion in emergency repairs after Maria, a Category 4 storm in September 2017. Congress earmarked about $10 billion to rebuild the system. Last week, the government of Puerto Rico announced the first disbursement of federal funds for reconstruction: $7.1 million.