Puerto Ricans dealing with blackouts and costly rate hikes have a new problem: The territory’s public utility and the manager of its power grid have been sniping at each other. The feud between the government-owned utility Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and privately run grid manager LUMA Energy is drawing new attention to Puerto Rico’s power struggles. The territory continues to be plagued by outages and heat advisories during a hurricane season that forecasters predict could be the most active on record. About 350,000 of the 1.5 million electricity customers across multiple municipalities lost power in mid-June. The territory’s plight makes Puerto Rico an example of what happens when a warming climate collides with a tottering electric grid. Years of underinvestment and poor maintenance by the heavily indebted public utility left Puerto Rico’s grid vulnerable to frequent blackouts. But Hurricane Maria caused horrific destruction in 2017, killing almost 3,000 people and plunging parts of the territory into blackouts that lasted nearly a year. That same year, the territory filed the largest municipal bankruptcy claim in U.S. history. Public outrage over blackouts and access to affordable electricity has put the spotlight on the public and private managers of the system. LUMA, already facing calls for its ouster, has received fresh condemnation over price hikes for a customer population that already pays some of the highest average rates in the United States. “Puerto Ricans are paying the highest price for the worst electric service," Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO. LUMA’s decision in June to defer $65 million worth of maintenance and improvement projects came under fire. The grid operator made the decision during the same month a damaged transformer disrupted power for people living in the Santa Isabel, Coamo and Aibonito municipalities. Mario Hurtado, LUMA’s chief regulatory officer, says the failure of the transformer points to the design and operational deficiencies the company inherited since assuming responsibility for managing the grid in June 2021. Josué Colón-Ortiz, PREPA’s executive director, accused LUMA of “glaring inefficiencies” in a letter to the Financial Oversight and Management Board, the independent entity charged with overseeing Puerto Rico’s finances. Robert Mujica, executive director of the financial oversight board, declared that “it’s time to stop the finger pointing” and called officials from LUMA, PREPA and other interests in for a meeting last week to hash out the issue. The federal government has set aside billions to repair Puerto Rico’s power grid, and LUMA is tapping those funds to replace outdated equipment and clear vegetation — the No. 1 cause of outages. Hurtado said LUMA isn’t responsible for the rate hikes, blaming spiking fuel prices driven by global events given Puerto Rico’s dependence on imported oil. But Velazquez said LUMA knew what it was getting into. “They agreed to do a job, they got the money and they have to deliver,” she said. “Enough with excuses.”
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