Why Is There No Electricity In Puerto Rico

Securing parts and grappling with an old system with no money is making it tougher.

Why is there no electricity in puerto rico.

This was the first major outage to knock out power to affect the entire island since hurricane. 87 88 in 2017 hurricane maria damaged the generating plant and transmission grid but the plant resumed. Five months after hurricane maria devastated puerto rico there are parts of the island that still don t have power. The governor says their hope is to get power to everyone by christmas but that full restoration of electricity could take much longer.

The puerto rico electric power authority prepa says power was restored around 7 a m. Puerto rico has no coal resources and produces no coal. 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. Four months after hurricane maria about 450 000 of 1 5 million electricity customers in puerto rico still have no service.

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. 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. Puerto rico is still literally powerless. 86 typically about 1 6 million tons of coal are imported annually from colombia to supply the 454 megawatt plant.

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. About half of puerto rico is without electricity two months after the hurricane npr began their interview with governor ricardo rossello. 85 the commonwealth has one coal fired electricity generating plant at guayama which began operations in 2002.