Why Is There No Electricity In Puerto Rico

About half of puerto rico is without electricity two months after the hurricane npr began their interview with governor ricardo rossello.

Why is there no electricity in puerto rico.

The governor says their hope is to get power to everyone by christmas but that full restoration of electricity could take much longer. 85 the commonwealth has one coal fired electricity generating plant at guayama which began operations in 2002. Blackouts regularly occur for hours at a time even in san juan. Though hurricane maria made landfall as a category four hurricane over a week ago the storm has left the island almost entirely without electrical power.

86 typically about 1 6 million tons of coal are imported annually from colombia to supply the 454 megawatt plant. They were among the remaining 1 000 households in puerto rico almost all living in poorer remote communities without electricity in july after maria practically knocked out the island s. 87 88 in 2017 hurricane maria damaged the generating plant and transmission grid but the plant resumed. The puerto rico electric power authority prepa is an electric power company owned by the commonwealth of puerto rico responsible for electricity generation power distribution and power transmission on the island.

Securing parts and grappling with an old system with no money is making it tougher. Many puerto ricans woke up on wednesday to a second day without electricity after the island s worst earthquake in a century knocked out power collapsed homes and killed at least one person. Prepa is the only entity authorized to conduct such business in puerto rico making it a government monopoly until on january 22 2018 the former governor of puerto rico ricardo. This was the first major outage to knock out power to affect the entire island since hurricane.

Five months after hurricane maria devastated puerto rico there are parts of the island that still don t have power. Four months after hurricane maria about 450 000 of 1 5 million electricity customers in puerto rico still have no service. Puerto rico is still literally powerless.