Even as Tropical Storm Fiona approached Puerto Rico last week, LUMA Energy was positioning crews, resources and materials across the island. As of Sept. 17, more than 1,295 utility workers, including lineworkers, substations, vegetation management, low voltage, and aviation crews, were available to respond. On Sept. 18, Fiona strengthened into a hurricane as it approached Puerto Rico. A few hours later, the eye of Fiona made landfall along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico near Punta Tocon at 19:20 UTC on Sept. 18, with maximum sustained winds of 75 knots (85 mph; 140 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 986 mbar (29.12 inHg), according to the National Hurricane Center.
Fiona ended up knocking out power across the island, while LUMA crews took immediate and critical actions to respond to the island-wide power outage following the hurricane-force winds, torrential rains and severe flooding. Crews continue to assess damage, performing critical repairs and working with PREPA and private generators to increase generation and reenergize the electric grid.
Yesterday, Sept. 25, as of 8 a.m. local time, service 821,227 customers, or 56% of total, had been restored. LUMA also announced estimated timeframes for the reenergization of the grid and restoring electric service to most customers impacted by Hurricane Fiona. LUMA stressed that the restoration estimates could change due to extensive damage caused by Hurricane Fiona, ongoing damage assessments, system repairs and the availability of generation.
Hurricane Fiona impacted many parts of the electric grid and generation facilities across Puerto Rico, especially in the western, southern and central regions of Puerto Rico. While damage assessments are ongoing, preliminary damage assessments and visual inspections indicated approximately 50% of the Puerto Rico electrical grid infrastructure incurred damage from the impacts brought by Hurricane Fiona. LUMA has been and will continue working around the clock to repair these damages, balance the system and restore power to the entire grid.
“We want to be very clear that LUMA is ready to restore power to more customers as soon as additional generation becomes available. We are being transparent about the progress we are making to restore power, and the ongoing challenges we face, given the impacts of Hurricane Fiona on generation and critical segments of the transmission and distribution system. Since the impact of the storm, we are continuing to coordinate our efforts to restore power and reenergize the electric system as quickly and safely as possible with PREPA and our generation partners. While there are many factors that could impact our combined restoration efforts over the coming days, bring online more generation is critical, and we are working as hard as possible to restore power to the overwhelming majority of customers by this Friday,” said LUMA Engineer Daniel Hernandez.”
Following are images from the damage and restoration after Hurricane Fiona.
