What’s more, the cost of the service has risen, while hundreds of families suffer the loss of home appliances such as stoves, refrigerators, televisions and air conditioners, with the privatizing company LUMA Energy failing to compensate for the losses.
With the entry of GeneraPR – a recently formed subsidiary of North American company New Fortress Energy – into energy production two months ago, the situation has worsened for PREPA subscribers, who had to contribute $30 million to do so.
Every day, thousands of subscribers are deprived of the service for days while the companies that solve the problem make it more expensive.
They’re trying to justify inefficiency by claiming inadequate infrastructure, and that’s what they wanted to solve, according to pro-privatization advocates, represented by then-Senators Eduardo Bhatia of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) and Larry Seilhamer of the annexationists New Progressive Party (PNP).
This week, Iván Báez, vice president for government affairs and advertising at GeneraPR, assured that the country’s electrical system will not achieve stability until 2024.
“With these plants, no matter how old they are, we will definitely have the same situations and we want to reduce the incidents, at least in terms of generation,” he said in a radio interview (Radio Isla 1320AM).
Another reason the privatizing companies cite for their inefficient service is the high demand for electricity due to the high temperatures that Puerto Rico experiences in June and July.
In the face of such a crisis, LUMA Energy performs so-called load relays, which means nothing more than shutting down certain areas to prevent a total breakdown of the electrical system.
The LUMA Energy consortium’s vice president of capital programs, engineer Juan Rodríguez, attributed the bad weather and problems in the power grid, which they were trying to improve.
“It’s a combination of rain, rain causing trees to fall on the transmission and distribution lines, it’s also the state of the network, a network that hasn’t been maintained in many years,” Rodríguez told radio station WKAQ-AM . -580.
There were times this week when over 130,000 subscribers were left without power, sparking collective unrest on this Caribbean island of 3.2 million that was under United States colonial rule.
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