Puerto Rico power aid tough for Fla. utilities
Mountainous terrain of island challenging for restoration of its power.
Although state companies have extensive experience in repairs after a hurricane, the island’s topography presents challenges.
Category 4 Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s aged and fragile power grid Sept. 20, ripping it apart with sustained winds of 155 mph and leaving the Caribbean island’s 3.4 million residents completely in the dark.
It’s believed to be the biggest blackout in U.S. history, according to New York-based research firm Rhodium Group. Measured by customer-hours of lost electricity service, Maria has so far disrupted 1.25 billion hours of electricity supply for citizens of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, both U.S. territories.
Roughly 70 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents are still without power.
With many hurricane restorations under their collective tool belts, Florida utilities’ power crews are arguably more experienced than those anywhere at restoring power after a hurricane has downed poles and lines and flooded substations.
But the logistics of sending crews to restore power and rebuild grid infrastructure to an island with mountainous terrain are far different than doing the same work on the mainland. Sending too many crews at once without careful planning could burden the already distressed island.
On Tuesday, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s CEO, Ricardo Ramos, in a letter to power industry groups Edison Electric Institute and American Public Power Association, requested additional Florida and New York-based companies to step in to help with the restoration.
On Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced that New York will be sending an additional 350 utility personnel and 220 vehicles from public and private electric companies to help Puerto Rico restore power.
“The request for assistance from PREPA now allows EEI member companies and our industry on the mainland to fully support the critical power restoration efforts underway in Puerto Rico,” said EEI President Tom Kuhn.
“For example, as part of the first wave of this deployment, 70 vehicles, including 38 bucket trucks and diggers from Con Edison of New York and Orange and Rockland Utilities, will be loaded onto a cargo ship near Camden, N.J., that will depart for the island
this weekend,” Kuhn said. “Nearly 120 overhead power
line workers, technical specialists, and personnel from both of these companies will be flown separately to Puerto Rico next week and will be there to meet the equipment and vehicles as they arrive in Puerto Rico.”
Florida Power & Light Co. spokesman Rob Gould said this week that the company is not involved in power restoration in Puerto Rico, but it stands ready to assist if requested, as it has from the early days of the storm. Juno Beach-based FPL,
the state’s largest utility with 4.9 million customers in 35 counties, completed the largest restoration in its history after Irma struck Sept. 10. It deployed a workforce of 28,000 line and vegetation workers.
Crews traveled from 30 states and Canada, driving their trucks down Florida’s highways.
Irma affected 4.45 million of FPL’s customer accounts — representing about 10 million people — in all the 35 counties it serves across 27,000 square miles.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph at Florida landfall and caused widespread flflooding and significant vegetation debris. It made landfall in the Florida Keys at 9:10 a.m. on Sept. 10 as a Category 4 storm and again at 3:35 p.m. on Marco Island as a Category 4 storm.
This past Tuesday, FPL sent more than 300 workers to Maine and Connecticut to restore power following a Nor’easter that knocked out service to more than 1 million people.
At the invitation of Rosselló, Florida Gov. Rick Scott led a delegation of Florida utility providers, including three FPL senior-level officials, to Puerto Rico on Friday.
While some progress had been made restoring power in Puerto Rico, there has been a scramble to regroup since the Puerto Rico govern-
ment’s Oct. 29 cancellation of a $300 million contract
with tiny Whitefish Energy Holdings of Montana.
PREPA gave the company the required 30 days notice of cancellation after criticism of the contract’s terms
and the company’s qualifications grew.
Whitefish Energy officials said in a statement that the decision would delay the power restoration it began Oct. 2.
“In less than a month, we brought 350 workers with spec ific experti se in thi s task and were on track to have more than 500 linemen on the island by this week if allowed to continue. We also brought over 600
pieces and 2,500 tons of equipment, including 400 trucks, cranes and excavators, as well as fifive helicopters,” Whitefish said.
Following that, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency in charge of the restoration effort, said it plans to increase a contract previously awarded to Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp., by $600 million to $840 million, to keep the grid repairs going.
The Corps has installed more than 364 generators at critical facilities such as hospitals, water plants and cellphone towers with another 41 in progress. Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite has said Puerto Rico
will not have the majority of its power generation back until January or February.
Puerto Rico’s Ramos requested 600 line workers and associated equipment, including a minimum of five helicopters and management and logistics support, in an Oct. 31 letter to the APPA and EEI.
Ramos wrote, “Due to the design similarities of our systems and recent experience in undertaking large scale restoration following Superstorm Sandy, we would initially request assistance from New York State public and
private utilities, but understand that the scope and damage and need for certain expertise could require additional support from elec
tric companies from across the United States. Public and private utilities from Florida are also available and can mobilize quickly due to distance and transportation logistics between Florida and Puerto Rico.”
“Bear in mind,” Ramos continued, “that extensive portions of the transmission lines in Puerto Rico run through rugged mountainous terrain with little or no road access.”
APPA said that before the request, several public power utilities already have sent crews to Puerto Rico to help with power restoration efforts.
Four Florida utilities have sent crews: Jacksonville’s JEA, Kissimmee Utility Authority, Orlando Utilities Commission and Lakeland Electric.
JEA spokeswoman Gerri Boyce said Thursday that the restoration effort in Puerto Rico differs greatly from those the company has
participated in as far north as Long Island.
“There is a difference in getting in a truck and driving eight hours and transporting vehicles and crews to an offshore place like Puerto Rico,” Boyce said. “It’s a plane ride away. You can’t drive there.”
This Tuesday, 41 JEA workers who were sent to Puerto
Rico for 30 days are scheduled to return to Jacksonville. Additional workers will be sent to replace them.
Working with the Jacksonville Port Authority, Crowley Maritime and Tote Maritime, JEA shipped 46 vehicles from bucket trucks to pickup trucks to Puerto Rico.
“Now we are just over there trying to help them restore their service,” Boyce said.
‘It’s a plane ride away. You can’t drive there.’
Gerri Boyce
Spokeswoman for JEA, Jacksonville’s electric utility