Persistent power outages and threats from Puerto Rico’s government prompted a company that operates the island’s transmission and distribution system to announce yesterday that it would dedicate more resources and crews to improve service, the Associated Press reported. The move came just hours after the U.S. territory’s Senate launched a hearing to analyze the government’s contract with Luma Energy — a consortium made up of Calgary, Alberta-based Atco and Quanta Services Inc. of Houston — amid calls to cancel it. Among the top officials demanding that the government revoke the contract is Puerto Rico’s Senate President José Luis Dalmau, of the main opposition party, and Jenniffer González, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and a member of the governor’s party, who said power outages have become “our daily bread.” Luma said yesterday that it would increase response brigades by 25% in the next month, remove vegetation covering 20 of the most critical transmission lines, increase inspections of substations — eight of which have caught on fire in the past year — and increase aerial inspections of remote transmission lines. Luma has stressed it is dealing with a power grid whose maintenance the local government neglected for decades and that was razed by Hurricane Maria in September 2017, with reconstruction efforts having started just months ago. Prior to Luma, Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, which is more than $9 billion in debt, managed the grid’s transmission and distribution.
