‘Why Don’t We Have Electricity?’: Outages Plague Puerto Rico
The New York Times
Transferring the power grid to a private company was supposed to help. But thousands protested last week over more blackouts.
AGUADILLA, P.R. — Four years after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico’s electrical grid a shambles and the entire island in the dark, residents had expected their fragile power system to be stronger now. Instead, unreliable electricity remains frustratingly common, hindering economic development and daily life.
In June, a private consortium known as LUMA Energy took over the transmission and distribution of electricity. And yet the situation has only worsened. Surging demand in August and September led to rolling blackouts affecting a majority of the island’s 1.5 million electrical customers.
Last week, several thousand people marched along a main highway in San Juan, the capital, blocking traffic with the latest in a series of protests over the seemingly unending electricity problems plaguing the island.
