(task) Power Line Fails; Darkness Returns to San Juan - The New York Times

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electricity, grid, collapse, CRS - PR - Energy
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> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/us/puerto-rico-electricity-power.html?_r=0 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/us/puerto-rico-electricity-power.html?_r=0>
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> Power Line Fails; Darkness Returns to San Juan
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> A main power line failed Thursday in Puerto Rico, plunging several cities, including San Juan, into darkness. Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The New York Times
> SAN JUAN, P.R. — A main power line that serves the northern half of Puerto Rico failed Thursday, knocking out electricity to seven cities that had only recently regained service and dealing a major setback to the island’s desperate efforts to regain normality.
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> Seven weeks after Hurricane Maria completely disabled Puerto Rico’s power grid <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/us/puerto-rico-electricity-power.html>, the island was generating just 18 percent of its electrical capacity, returning service to where it had been two and half weeks ago. On Thursday morning, the island had been at about 43.2 percent of capacity.
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> The disruption also meant that many people no longer had running water, because pumping stations are powered by electricity.
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> “We’re all in the dark,” said Maritza Cuprill, 54, a property manager whose San Juan condominium got its power back a week ago, only to lose it again on Thursday. “I was in Walgreens and everything suddenly went pitch black. The first thing I thought of was my vehicle: I filled up the tank for just in case. That was devastating when we had to wait in lines for five, six and seven hours.”
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> Ms. Cuprill was not worried about any food purchases: she had not been foolhardy enough to buy perishables. Many areas where the power had returned had suffered continuous glitches, damaging appliances and fraying nerves.
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> “I buy food every day,” Ms. Cuprill said. “I don’t trust what they say. They say the power will be back in 19 hours. I will believe that when I see it.”
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> In a statement Thursday afternoon, the Puerto Rican government said that workers had made progress toward the repairs and that equipment was being put in place to restore the service.
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> “We have maximum interest in resolving this and energizing the metropolitan area again,” Justo González, director of generation for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, said in a Facebook Live <https://www.facebook.com/aeepronline/videos/138506083469643/>video. “We will be resolving this problem soon.”
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> Mr. González said the electric company, known as Prepa, would focus first on bringing the lights back to hospitals, airports, fire stations and areas that are crucial to the economy. He said the most affected areas were in the San Juan metropolitan area, including the cities of Vega Baja, Arecibo, Barceloneta, Manatí, Bayamón, San Juan and areas near Canóvanas.
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> The power failure was the latest blow for Puerto Rico’s beleaguered and bankrupt power company, which has been criticized for awarding a small Montana firm a $300 million contract to fix power lines that included highly unusual clauses that prohibited any audits. Several congressional committees are investigating the deal, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has vowed not to pay for it.
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> The government was forced to cancel the contract <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/us/whitefish-cancel-puerto-rico.html>, and the company, Whitefish Energy Holdings, is scheduled to leave at the end of the month. A spokesman for the company said none of the issues concerning the power failure were related to repairs that Whitefish had performed.
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> “Puerto Rico is not rising,” Rosita Aponte, who owns a pharmacy in Caguas, said, referring to a popular slogan #PuertoRicoSeLevanta. “When it does rise, it will be empty, because all of the small-business owners will have left.”
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> Ms. Aponte said the lights went out en masse to all the businesses on her strip.
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> “We can’t take this anymore,” she said. “I have spent $8,000 on broken generators. At this point, 50 days into this, everyone has a broken generator. You are not supposed to be living on these things.”