Electricity restored to 75 percent of customers in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico power workers

PUERTO RICO -

Nearly six months after Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico, the island's electricity has been restored to 75 percent capacity, according to its utility company.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said Sunday that 75.35 percent of customers now have electricity. It added that 90.8 percent of the electrical grid, already anemic even before the Sept. 20 storm barrelled through the island, is generating power again.

Thousands of power restoration personnel made up of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), industry workers from the mainland, and the Army Corps of Engineers have made marked progress in recent weeks.

Despite this, 65 people in shelters and an island-wide boil water advisory is still in effect even though almost 100 percent of Puerto Ricans have access to drinking water, local government records show.

The issue of power became controversial after Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello recently announced plans to privatize PREPA after it chose to allocate a $300 million power restoration contract to Whitefish, a Montana-based company with only a few staffers, rather than put it through the mutual-aid network of public utilities usually called upon to coordinate power restoration after major disasters.

That contract was nixed and Whitefish stopped working in Puerto Rico after FEMA raised "significant concerns" over the procurement process.

Related News

Liz Truss

UK price cap on household energy bills expected to cost 89bn

LONDON - Liz Truss’s intervention to freeze energy prices for households for two years is expected to cost the government £89bn, according to the first major costing of the policy by the sector’s leading consultancy.

The analysis from Cornwall Insight, seen exclusively by the Guardian, shows the prime minister’s plan to tackle the cost of living crisis could cost as much as £140bn in a worst-case scenario.

Truss announced in early September that the average annual bill for a typical household would be capped at £2,500 to protect consumers from the intensifying cost of living crisis and a scheduled 80% rise in…

READ MORE
schott-powers-german-plants-with-green-electricity

Schott Powers German Plants with Green Electricity

READ MORE

Yet another Irish electricity provider is increasing its prices

READ MORE

ontario nuclear plant

Analysis: Why is Ontario’s electricity about to get dirtier?

READ MORE

Hydro-Quebec adopts a corporate structure designed to optimize the energy transition

READ MORE