UPDATE (10:40 a.m. ET, Thursday Nov. 16, 2017): Story corrected and updated to reflect statement from Whitefish Energy that the company was not to blame for the recent outage.
It’s been nearly two months since Category 4 Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico, leaving behind immense devastation. On Wednesday morning, the island took another step backward, as the lights went off in San Juan once again.
SEE ALSO: Google: Project Loon has provided internet access to 100,000 people in Puerto Rico
Shortly after the storm, the island’s government signed a controversial $300 million deal with a little-known Montana company known as Whitefish Energy to restore power to parts of the island. Yet the island continues to experience major problems with its fragile electrical grid.
As of Monday morning, power had been restored to about 50 percent of the island. That’s when a power line known as the Cambalache Manatee line failed, again, plunging San Juan and other cities into darkness.
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Confirmed: power out in Puerto Rico – Cause unknown, as of now.
It just so happens, that Gov. @ricardorossello had been heralding November 15th (today) as a goal of being at 50% generation, on the 56th day after Maria. https://t.co/4ycaEfSFQS— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) November 15, 2017
Se reporta falla en línea de 230KV de Cambalache a Manatí. Personal de AEE se acerca al área para identificar el problema y restablecer el 50% de generación alcanzado. CC6
— AEE (@AEEONLINE) November 15, 2017
This is the second time in a week that this particular line has failed, affecting the parts of Puerto Rico that actually had restored power.
On Tuesday, the first outage was blamed on “human error” when a crane damaged the line.
PREPA reports power out in Puerto Rico due to “failure of the Cambalache Manatee 230KV line”
*This is the same line where there was failure last week
-Yesterday, PREPA boss Ricardo Ramos said last weeks outage was caused by a “crane”, signaling human error caused it— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) November 15, 2017
In a statement to Mashable, a spokesman for Whitefish Energy denied that work the company had done played a role in Wednesday’s power failure, and instead blamed issues with the Puerto Rican utility company, known as PREPA.
“The outage in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, just like the one last week, has absolutely nothing to do with the work performed by Whitefish Energy on the 50100 transmission line. That line was turned over to PREPA several weeks ago and our crews are no longer in the area as they are working elsewhere on the island,” said Whitefish Energy spokesman Chris Chiames, in an email.
A statement from PREPA cited a “technical failure” with the 50100 transmission line.
On Tuesday, officials were in the hot seat for a Congressional hearing. Documents released by the House Committee on Natural Resources showed that the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) contract with Whitefish was extremely troubling, particularly the approval of the contract despite internal calls of concern.
