A power plant in Palo Seco, Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.
On January 3, almost all LUMA customers had their power restored following a massive outage on December 31, 2024 that knocked out the entirety of Puerto Rico’s electricity supply. However, calculations by Luma indicate that demand will continue to challenge the company’s ability to maintain sufficient reserve capacity to meet the needs of consumers.
In the wee hours of the morning on New Year’s Eve, Puerto Rico was plunged into darkness by a power outage that affected the entire island. LUMA immediately activated its Emergency Operations Center, and had restored power to approximately 1.4 million customers by noon on January 1. However, hours later, a second issue at the Aguirre power station “caused a system-wide event that affected other generating plants,” according to LUMA, which interrupted service to almost 600,000 homes, businesses and other organizations. A second event at the same power plant at around 7 p.m. that day forced LUMA to implement load shedding practices.
In a statement issued amidst the crisis, LUMA Chief Executive Officer Juan Saca noted the “fragile nature” of Puerto Rico’s grid, and admitted that rolling blackouts would be a necessary stop-gap measure while things were stabilized. He appealed to customers “to please reduce their energy consumption whenever possible, and to use battery storage when and if available.”
The New Year’s Eve blackout came weeks after LUMA triumphantly announced a “historic year of progress,” touting the improvements made to “grid reliability, resiliency, customer service, emergency preparedness and renewable energy adoption” in 2024.
However, as LUMA – and Puerto Rico as a whole – continue to recover from the devastating outage, it is clear that much more progress needs to be made to ensure a stable supply of electricity for the entire territory.
