Power restored to 1.3M in Puerto Rico amid blackout

Power was restored to more than 90 percent of customers in Puerto Rico on Saturday following a fire earlier this week at a major power plant that left roughly 1.5 million residents on the island without power.

Luma Energy said in a Facebook post that as of 11 a.m. Saturday, 1.3 million customers had their power restored. The company added that it was continuing to restore power to the rest of those affected by the outage along with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (AEE).

“Given the current conditions, restoration work will continue throughout the day today,” the company said. “Restoration work continues to be a challenge as LUMA and [government] teams work to establish and connect more generations throughout the day and night.”

Also on Saturday, Puerto Rico’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said power had been restored to all of its correctional facilities.

The outage was reported on Thursday following a fire at the Costa Sur Power Plant, one of four main plants on the island, according to The Associated Press. The cause of the fire is unknown, although it may have been related to a circuit breaker failure.

AEE on Saturday reported that crews were still working to repair equipment at the Costa Sur plant.

Luma Energy took over transmitting and distributing power in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the territory’s electrical grid in 2017.

Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D) tweeted after the power outage this week that “this type of breakdown in our system is unacceptable.”

“I will not rest until we achieve the goal of modernizing and replacing our old and outdated electrical system,” he said.