Massive Power Outage In Puerto Rico

I have a lot of family I can't get in touch with in Puerto Rico.. Their power was spotty enough during storms, that was bad enough. Now a massive power outage as the result of an accidental fire leaves over 1.5 million people with no power.

The island's fire department said it extinguished a blaze at the power plant in southern Puerto Rico that serves a majority of customers on the island. Heavy storms were affecting the area where the plant is.

Authorities said the outage caused 15 fires across Puerto Rico as a result of malfunctioning generators, including at the upscale Vanderbilt hotel in the popular tourist area of Condado and at the mayor's office in the northern coastal town of Catano. All those fires were put out and no one was injured, officials said.

The blackout snarled road traffic across the island and the government had to cancel train service in the capital of San Juan and close a busy traffic tunnel in the island's southern region. Businesses, universities and government offices shuttered early, creating even more chaos on roads.

"I call on people to cooperate and respect drivers and government officials ... to avoid any regrettable incidents," Transportation Secretary Miguel Torres said.

The outage angered many Puerto Ricans who are struggling with power bills that are on average twice that of the U.S. mainland. People took to social media to demand where exactly their money is going.

The power company has faced numerous allegations of corruption and is struggling with a $9 billion debt that it hopes to restructure. Company officials have said they are seeking more revenue to update what they say is outdated equipment.

-Orlando Sentinel

PIX11
Univision


Where is their money going? That's a great question.
Puerto Rico is an amazing island plagued by some corrupt, brainless people.
Damaged lines causing millions to lose power? Sure, it happens, but in a place where the bills are ridiculously high?

Just wanted to share this with ATS.

a reply to: oblivvious

I hope your family is safe and that they are able to make contact with you very soon.

It's a sad situation there from what I've heard from a coworker who left a few months ago to help his family back there.

Oddly, he is an LPN and for some reason (can't remember exactly what he said) his license from here is no good there. He would have to do a bunch of things to be able to practice in P.R.

Good luck to your family and you!

a reply to: oblivvious

Solar flare?

The report I read said it was two 230,000 volt lines.
I would think they would engineer more redundancy?

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: oblivvious

Solar flare?

Solar flares dont cause power outages. But no, no solar flare of note nor geomagnetic storming (which can cause power outages).
www.swpc.noaa.gov...

There are 6 electric producing plants in Puerto Rico including a nuclear plant.
The problem occurred at a large oil powered plant on the south shore.
Seems a little odd that just two power lines could shut down the whole island?

a reply to: Cauliflower

With a limited grid system a power outage can have a sort of ripple or cascade effect. The other stations are not there for redundancy, they are there to provide power. If one station goes down it increases the load on other stations. There are automatic systems at the stations which try to compensate for the increased load. Sometimes, those systems will shut the generators down in order to prevent damaging them. Depending on the system, it can take a while to restart the generators.

I don't know if that's whats happened in this case, but it does happen.


BTW, the nuke in Puerto Rico is non-operational and has been for a very long time.

a reply to: Phage

But if a large-enough one hit, couldn't it fry the electric grid and/or potentially roast anything that's not in Faraday cage through the transient electromagnetic disturbance?

a reply to: FamCore
With a flare intense enough to do that, the power grid would be the least of our problems.

a reply to: Phage

I see gizmodo.com...

It’s hard to overstate just how much this would uproot our lives. The lights would of course go out, as would the internet, and any device that draws current from the wall. In places with electronically-controlled municipal water supplies — like most modern cities — toilets and sewage treatment systems would stop working.

Heating and air conditioning would fail. Perishable food and medication would be lost. ATMs would be useless. Gas pumps would go offline. And so forth.

GPS technology would also be knocked out. Said Grunman, “The GPS system depends on the very precise timing of a course of signals between two points, like a spacecraft and your phone. If you dump a bunch of energetic particles into the atmosphere, that effects your GPS. Which is sobering when you consider the replacement of old aircraft landing technology with GPS.” Some of these effects could last years, and they’d be felt globally.

a reply to: FamCore
Right. A CME can cause a geomagnetic storm which can be problematic. A CME is not a solar flare.
www.abovetopsecret.com...


Your source:

“It’s a huge EM pulse that roils up the ionosphere, causing it to expand out,” Berger said. “But the solar flare really doesn’t damage technology.”

a reply to: Phage

Ahh, a CME is not the same thing.. now it all makes sense. Thanks for pointing that out

There was a fire caused by two lines collapsing. This was in aguirre plant. When aguirre went offline the remaining plants shut themselves off to protect the remaining systems. We are looking at one maybe 2 days without power. Some towns already have power again.

OP dont worry about your family, there is no chaos....yet