Puerto Rico is Experiencing an Island-Wide Blackout (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, the power grid is still unstable. But progress was being made; according to CBS, less than 10 percent of the island was without power as of a month ago. But now, the Associated Press reports that the island is undergoing yet another full blackout. The power company is still investigating the cause and estimates it will take 24 to 36 hours for power to be restored. The saga of Puerto Rico's power grid has been an unhappy one. The US territory was already facing a financial crisis before the hurricane hit. The island only has one electric company, and prior to Maria, it was $9 billion in debt and utilizing outdated infrastructure and equipment.

Comments

Stiff the creditors

[Seven Spirals]

Stiff the power company's creditors. Allow them to declare bankruptcy. Then re-capitalize the whole thing without debt and move on with what you can actually pay for. If that's impossible or they are too corrupt/incompetent to get that done, then as an individual you should factor in whole-house power generation before getting a house or moving to PR. I'm not saying this with a shaking finger or judgment, I'm just saying it seems like common sense, now.

Re: Stiff the creditors

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop with idiotic comments about "the left" or "the right," and what they may or may not know. There are smart people across the spectrum, and it doesn't help discussion to denigrate broad, unspecific groups of people. Interest rates being tied to risk is pretty darn basic.

Re: How is that possible??

[Bryansix]

Why is investing in Hydro bad? Its a very stable baseload generator for the power grid. The main problem is getting the power over the transmission lines to where it is needed. This was a problem with the 50-60 year old tech probably in place but it's not as much of an issue with current tech and equipment. This means the transmission and distribution circuits need to be upgraded and that costs money. They also have to upgrade the substation equipment to bring in redundancy, allow for better power protection, and better regulate the voltage coming from the substation as well as the voltages on the individual branch lines of each circuit. Spending on infrastructure upgrades is not only a good idea, its necessary.

Re: How is that possible??

[dj245]

PREPA's has deferred maintenance on their power plants for so long that it would be very expensive to rehabilitate many of them into anything resembling a reliable condition. They have turbine rotors that have been sitting outside rusting for years. Even if they gave me a power plant for free, I wouldn't want to attempt to turn it into a profitable enterprise. Plus, since they have burned many power plant repair companies so badly, most will not work for PREPA until past bills are paid AND new work is paid in advance.

Source- PREPA owes my company a large sum of money for power plant work done before the hurricanes.

Re: How is that possible??

[edtice1559]

I doubt nothing in your statement. But PR has no money due a number of factors of which years of mismanagement is one. The inability to make necessary capital investments is a big problem.