Hurricane Fiona causes a general blackout

The Hurricane Fiona A general blackout occurred this afternoon, leaving 1.5 million subscribers without power, he confirmed New day Executive Director of Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Joshua Columbus.

A few minutes later, the governor Peter Pierluzzi He verified the information on his Facebook account.

“LUMA Energy and the Electric Power Authority advise that the power system is currently out of service due to the effects of the hurricane. Protocols have been implemented in accordance with established plans to deal with this situation. Both LUMA and PREPA personnel are active and ready to respond as conditions permit”Pierluzzi said.

The blackout occurred shortly after 1:00 p.m., and PREPA was “launching” several rapid response units (“black-start”) to restore the network as soon as possible, Golan said.

“When the (transmission) lines went out (of service) the whole system was shut down,” he said, referring to the 115,000 and 230,000 volt lines that take power from the generating plants. These lines may go out of service as a result of rain or contact with vegetation due to wind, among other reasons.

“We’re already starting Palo Seco with ‘black-start’ units. We’re with the North Start… Palo Seco and San Juan. There’s already one unit up and running in Palo Seco,” He explained that because there were no transmission lines, the plants were closed to protect themselves. In other words, the blackout is not caused by a lack of generation.

According to Colon, when the outage occurred, energy demand was 500 megawatts, indicating that “many customers were already out of service.”

“We are going to start powering from the north. We are integrated with the Energy Control Center (operated by LUMA Energy). We are running now,” he said.

At the time of publishing this note, LUMA had not responded to a request for information New day.