San Juan, Puerto Rico — Massive power outages occurred across nearly all of Puerto Rico Tuesday morning as the U.S. territory prepares to celebrate New Year’s Eve. More than 1.2 million of its 1.47 million customers are without power, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees the island’s power transmission and distribution.
It was not immediately clear what caused the widespread outage or when power would be restored. Luma officials did not immediately return a message for comment.
In a post on It said it would provide more details as soon as possible.
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A spokesperson for Genera PR, which is overseeing the development, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said on social media that his administration was communicating with LUMA and Genera “about the massive power outage that has affected a significant portion of the island due to a critical defect.”
He said work was underway to restore power supply and the government was “demanding answers and solutions from both LUMA and Genera.” LUMA must ensure that generating units outside the fault area can be restarted quickly and that people are duly informed of the actions they are taking. “To restore service across the island.”
But in an interview with the Telemundo network late Monday, Puerto Rico Electric Energy Authority Director Josué Colón said it could take several days to fully restore service.
Puerto Rico continues to struggle with chronic power outages caused by a broken power grid. Destroyed by Hurricane MariaIt was a powerful Category 4 storm that hit the island in September 2017. Due to years of maintenance and lack of investment, the system was already in decline before the storm.
