The WHOLE island.
At around 12:40 local time (16:40 UTC), a power outage impacting the entire island or #PuertoRIco began. #Internet traffic from the territory dropped by ~40% as a result.
Follow traffic trends at https://t.co/5elFSdaOajhttps://t.co/QZOfDCZRas pic.twitter.com/gIoNodTXaA
— Cloudflare Radar (@CloudflareRadar) April 16, 2025
And every last power plant went down.
Every last mojito with almost half the island still out as of this morning.
Nearly 620,000 are still without power in Puerto Rico on Thursday, more than 24 hours after the entire island lost electricity when its power plants were knocked out of service, the latest breakdown of the territory’s faulty electric grid.
I’m sure I’ve seen this movie before..several times.
In fact, the island rang in this past New Year’s in the dark.
The island’s new governor was sworn in to the sound of generators humming on January 2nd…
Jenniffer González Colón was sworn in Thursday as Puerto Rico’s new governor during a normally ebullient ceremony held amid widespread anger over a blackout that hit the U.S. territory days ago.
González, a Republican who backs President-elect Donald Trump and whose pro-statehood New Progressive Party secured a historic third consecutive term after she won the Nov. 5 election, has pledged to stabilize the Caribbean island’s crumbling power grid.
“There are many challenges facing our island,” she said in her first public address as governor as she acknowledged the blackout in a speech to a crowd gathered in front of the seaside Capitol. “That is precisely what moves me to address that first challenge with a sense of urgency.”
…with protests and fatalistic sighs from residents.
…A protester with her face covered interrupted the Mass at Parroquia Santa Teresita in San Juan. She yelled, “Jenniffer, we came for you! Puerto is without power.”
…Protesting the ceremony was Yara Humarán Martínez, an aquatic physical therapist whose 83-year-old mother remains without power.
“I don’t have any hope that she will change anything,” she said of the new governor.
Four months isn’t a lot of lead time to get anything done, particularly in a place where these problems have festered for decade after decade thanks to corruption, malfeasance, and incompetence.
Gas lines formed at the stations that were working to get fuel for generators.
Puerto Rico was hit with its second massive island-wide power outage since New Year’s Eve. About 47% of customers have power back up and running as of the morning of April 17. https://t.co/Qlhip5tXwT pic.twitter.com/Yvu5SsUCBk
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 17, 2025
Passengers stuck on electric commuter trains had to debark in some awful places.
Puerto Rico is experiencing a total island-wide blackout with all power plants generating zero electricity. The outage forced passengers to evacuate Tren Urbano rail cars as services came to a halt. Authorities are investigating the cause. pic.twitter.com/xag9Fn7SGS
— Geopoliti𝕏 Monitor (@GeopolitixM) April 16, 2025
Businesses who had auxiliary back-up did what they could to help out those in distress.
A woman in Cabo Rojo relied on the Econo supermarket’s power to connect her respiratory therapy during Puerto Rico’s island-wide blackout on April 16, 2025. A security guard allowed her to stay despite the store closing. The outage, affecting 1.4M Luma Energy clients, was caused… pic.twitter.com/pRdOn1Xu2l
— Christian Vega (@capitangeeky) April 17, 2025
The Canadian company, Luma, which operates the Puerto Rican grid jointly with a US company, was back to scrambling for explanations and parts to get the juice back up and running.
For her part, the governor has promised to cancel the Luma contract, but it begs the question: replace them with what?
What company would be willing to take on the ancient and neglected Puerto Rican infrastructure that comes with the piece of paper and the related Jones Act issues in transporting fuel to the island? Not to mention confronting the endemic and corrosive aroma of corruption that suffuses doing business on the island.
…The roar of generators and smell of fumes filled the air as a growing number of Puerto Ricans renewed calls for the government to cancel the contracts with Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and distribution of power, and Genera PR, which oversees generation.
González promised to heed those calls.
“That is not under doubt or question,” she said, but added that it’s not a quick process. “It is unacceptable that we have failures of this kind.”
González said a major outage like the one that occurred Wednesday leads to an estimated $230 million revenue loss daily.
They’ve identified vegetation as being partly responsible for exacerbating a system failure and hope to have the rest of the customers back up within the next day or so.
…In an update reported by CBS on Thursday, the Puerto Rican Luma Energy company said: “Preliminary analysis points to a failure in the protection system as the initial trigger, followed by the presence of vegetation on a transmission line between Cambalache and Manatí.”
As you’d expect, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the administration is monitoring the situation.
That’s about all anyone can do until the lights come back on, and somehow they can convince another company to take a stab at it.
This bodes ill for storm season, that’s for sure.
