Customers of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) are now paying 33.4 cents/kWh for electricity — nearly double the rate they paid just two years ago, Utility Dive reported. The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (FOMB) certified PREPA’s updated fiscal plan in June, outlining how the island’s fragile grid can be modernized and shifted away from fossil fuel generation. But the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA) maintains the plan does not move fast enough to adopt renewable energy, and that a more rapid transformation away from fossil fuels could help reduce rates to 20 cents/kWh. Two years ago, customers paid about 17.4 cents/kWh, but are now paying about 8% of their income for electricity. PREPA’s fiscal plan identified several historical and structural challenges the utility faces. It notes that in Fiscal Year 2021 the utility’s generation was 43% natural gas, 37% oil, 17% coal and 3% renewable resources. The utility is targeting 100% renewable energy by 2050, though it has faced myriad challenges in recent years including: the destruction of its electric grid in 2017 by Hurricane Maria, COVID-19, a declining population, bankruptcy and rising fuel prices in part due to the war in Ukraine. However, while PREPA had shown “modest improvement since 2017, metrics assessed for 2020 placed PREPA in the bottom quartile of peer utilities.” Puerto Rico residents and businesses “experienced far more outages for far longer periods of time.” The island’s economic recovery “depends on the comprehensive and overdue transformation of its energy sector,” FOMB Chairman David Skeel Jr. said in a June 30 statement. “When fully implemented, PREPA’s transformation will provide Puerto Rico with a resilient and modern electric grid and more efficient and cleaner power generation.”
