NEW YORK, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Puerto Rico restored 99 percent of its power supply as of Thursday morning after a massive outage which left 1.3 million customers in darkness on New Year's Eve, according to Luma Energy, the company in charge of the island's electricity service.
While the transmission and distribution systems are now operational, Luma Energy warned of potential generation shortages starting at noon Thursday. To match available generation to customer demand, the company will likely require temporary rotating outages.
Luma Energy urged residents to conserve energy, use generators safely, and rely on battery power to reduce the impact of the lack of generation on the power system.
Frequent outages have plagued Puerto Rico, with funding and maintenance challenges leading to long-term power issues. Puerto Ricans pay the second-highest electricity rates in the nation, just behind Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The New Year's Eve outage exacerbated people's dissatisfaction with the power system.
Luma Energy, a Canadian-American firm, took over Puerto Rico's electric service in 2021 from the state-run Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). PREPA declared bankruptcy in 2017 and is still burdened with over 10 billion U.S. dollars in debt. ■