Electricity has been restored to roughly 87 percent of all power customers, nearly three days after a circuit-breaker failure at the main power plant caused an island-wide outage, APA reports citing NBC.
The majority of power customers in Puerto Rico who were left in the dark earlier this week following a massive blackout that affected over a million residents had their electricity restored on Saturday.
The two entities in charge of providing electric services to 1.5 million power customers in Puerto Rico said their crews have been working hard since Wednesday night when a circuit-breaker at the Costa Sur generation plant, one of four main plants on the island, caught fire and caused the remaining power plants to shut down.
Power has been restored to at least 1.3 million customers as of late Saturday morning, according to Luma Energy, the Canadian-American private company that took over Puerto Rico’s power transmission and distribution last year.
As roughly 87 percent of customers gained access to electricity, Luma Energy also urged consumers to limit their power use in order to avoid energy demand upticks that could hinder the ongoing restoration process at some of the main power plants.
Workers from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the bankrupt public corporation in charge of controlling power generation units, have reconnected at least seven of the shutdown plants.
On Saturday morning, the power authority said on Twitter that it started working on reconnecting Puerto Rico’s two largest power plants, Costa Sur and EcoEléctrica.
"As long as the EcoEléctrica and Costa Sur units are not in service, the system will not have the required energy reserve," to deal with setbacks, the power authority said in Spanish.
Costa Sur, the largest power plant in Puerto Rico, represents 57 percent of the island’s natural gas-fired electricity generating capacity. A series of strong earthquakes that struck southern Puerto Rico in 2020 significantly damaged both Costa Sur and EcoEléctrica.
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