More than 50 thousand customers are still without electricity

More than 50 thousand customers have no electric service during the night hours of today, Monday, after experiencing a power outage this afternoon.

According to the website of the company in charge of the distribution service, LUMA Energy, some 53,890 subscribers still have no service.

The sectors most affected by the outage are: Arecibo 21,431; Mayagüez 10,341 and Ponce with 16,844.

Earlier, the director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (Prepa), Josué Colón, indicated that after the outage some units will take time to restore service, so he estimates that 100% energization could take some time.

According to the official, a breakdown in one of the Applied Energy System (AES) plants will take between 24 to 36 hours to be reestablished.

"A large part of the customers should have already received service because several system backup units came in, however, for 100 percent restoration we must return Palo Seco Unit #3 this afternoon and reestablish Unit #7. I still do not have the assessment of the units, if any of them suffered any damage. Yes from AES, the plant manager told me that it will take between 24 and 36 hours to restore these units because they suffered damage to the atmospheric diaphragms of one of the turbines and also in the condenser of another of the turbines, so these units will not be able to return to service today," explained Colon in Día a Día (Telemundo).

For its part, the company LUMA, indicated through its social networks that it was a failure in a transmission line that left thousands of customers without service.

Prepa indicated that the failure occurred in the 50,900 230kv line between the Aguas Buenas GIS and the Bayamón Transmission Center. The same also affected units of San Juan #7, Palo Seco #3 and megagens of Palo Seco.