Dear LUMA customer,

Following an island-wide blackout that began at 5:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, LUMA activated its Emergency Operations Center and has been working tirelessly to restore power to customers as quickly and safely as possible.  As of 12:00 p.m. this morning we have restored 1.4 Million customers; or over 98.3% of the system.

On behalf of the entire LUMA team, we recognize the tremendous inconvenience this outage has caused, particularly during the holidays, and we sincerely apologize for the effect this had on you and your family. Please know we remain fully committed to restoring service to every customer and addressing the root cause for this significant outage event.

Even as we continue to investigate the root cause of the event, we have been executing our complete system restoration plan which has, over the last 24 hours, stabilized the Transmission & Distribution system to a point that could accept available generation.  Among the actions we have taken include:

• Coordinating with electrical generation facilities to begin making energy available (1440 MW currently available)
• Carefully energizing the Transmission system to be able to supply communities
• Energizing substations to provide electricity to customers
  • Aguas Buenas substation remains out of service as repairs are to be completed today in the afternoon
• Connecting:
  • All hospitals
  • Many critical Puerto Rico Aqueduct Sewage Authority facilities including La Plata and the Super Aqueduct

Despite the significant actions taken, which include ensuring the availability of the Transmission & Distribution system, we are projecting a potential generation shortfall during peak load times today and tomorrow.  Given the fragile nature of the grid, we will need to manage available generation to customer demand which will likely require rotating temporary outages. To minimize impact of these outages, we are urging our customers to please reduce their energy consumption whenever possible, and to use battery storage when and if available. 

LUMA remains in constant coordination with our generation partners, and we will continue to energize customers as more capacity becomes available.

Lastly, our team of dedicated professionals is working around the clock to address this emergency, and we will not rest until every customer is restored. We will continue to provide regular updates on the status of the restoration process through our website www.lumapr.com, social media accounts and media outlets throughout the day. We also urge our customers to make safe and prudent use of generators and to place them in well-ventilated areas to avoid injury or incidents and to report any electrical emergency by calling us at 1-844-888-5862.

Sincerely,

Juan Saca