XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, soc.culture.puerto-rico   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: parasites@splcenter.org   
      
   A critical failure in Puerto Rico’s power grid has caused a massive   
   blackout affecting a large part of the island, according to a post on Gov.   
   Pedro Pierluisi’s X account.   
      
   The New Year’s Eve blackout began Tuesday morning at 5:30 a.m., according   
   to LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American power company responsible for power   
   distribution and transmission on the island. The outage initially knocked   
   out power to nearly 90% of customers. By noon over 1.2 million users, or   
   more than 80% of customers, were still without power, the company said.   
      
   “We can report that work is already underway to restore service with the   
   San Juan and Palo Seco plants,” Pierluisi said.   
      
   “We are demanding answers and solutions from both Luma and Genera, who   
   must expedite the restart of the generating units outside the fault area   
   and keep the people duly informed about the measures they are taking to   
   restore service throughout the Island.”   
      
   Luma Energy’s Emergency Operations Center is working with Genera and other   
   power collaborators to restore the electrical system and power to the   
   island as quickly as possible, the company said. The full restoration   
   process will take about a day or two, the company added.   
      
   Residents expressed their displeasure with the outages on Tuesday ahead of   
   2025 celebrations.   
      
   “Complete frustration,” Sonia Arroyo, a resident of Vega Alta outside of   
   San Juan, told CNN en Español. “Frustration, disappointment with the   
   government, with the institutions, with everything.”   
      
   “I am more concerned about the development of this country than about the   
   party,” said Liz Rebeca Aponte of Dorado. “Here we work in the   
   pharmaceutical industry, and industries that want to invest in the country   
   will not come here if we do not improve the structure.”   
      
   The outage is just the latest time that Puerto Rico’s inconsistent power   
   system has faltered on a mass scale.   
      
   Power outages on the island have been a long-running source of frustration   
   for Puerto Ricans who rely on a fragile and poorly-maintained power grid,   
   with modernization efforts slow to materialize over several decades, first   
   by a publicly-owned entity and today by a private caretaker.   
      
   The collapse of the grid in 2017 after Hurricane Maria left hundreds of   
   thousands of people without power for months. The outage was considered   
   the largest blackout in US history in terms of the total number of lost   
   hours of electricity.   
      
   Since then, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded $9.9   
   billion for permanent projects to repair damage caused by Hurricane Maria.   
   LUMA Energy took over management of the grid in 2021 from the government-   
   owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA. Genra PR is in   
   charge of energy production and initiated operations in 2023.   
      
   Still, the challenges remain. After Hurricane Ernesto in August, about   
   half of all electric customers on the island were at one point without   
   power, according to LUMA Energy.   
      
   https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/31/us/puerto-rico-power-outage/index.html   
      
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