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More than 197,000 Puerto Rico customers lose power after Costa Sur failure

From El Nacional · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Official statement Ongoing story
  • LUMA Energy reported that 197,674 Puerto Rico customers lacked electricity after Costa Sur units 5 and 6 shut down abruptly.
  • The company said load shedding followed generation shortfalls and that it was coordinating with power generators to reduce the impact.
  • The outage added to public frustration over Puerto Rico’s repeatedly failing grid, which remains highly fragile after Hurricane Maria damaged infrastructure in 2017.

The sudden loss of two generating units at Puerto Rico’s Costa Sur power plant left more than 197,000 customers without electricity.

LUMA Energy, which handles transmission and distribution across the archipelago, said units 5 and 6 at the plant in Guayanilla had gone offline abruptly. The company reported that load shedding was taking place because of generation shortfalls.

At 3 p.m. local time, 197,674 customers remained without service, according to figures posted on LUMA’s website. The company said generating companies are responsible for producing electricity and that it remained in constant communication with them to limit the effects on residents.

The latest outage has intensified dissatisfaction with LUMA, whose service reaches 1.4 million customers. Protests against the company are recurring in Puerto Rico, while other sectors point to a deeper problem in electricity generation. Generation remains under the control of the state-run Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known by its Spanish initials AEE, after decades of poor public administration.

Puerto Rico’s power network has remained extremely fragile since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017 and destroyed much of the infrastructure. Power cuts have been common across the territory ever since.

Costa Sur units 5 and 6 went offline abruptly, and load shedding is taking place because of generation shortfalls.

— LUMA EnergyThe utility explained the cause of the outage in a social media statement.
About this summary

Originally published by El Nacional in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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