SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hundreds of Puerto Ricans gathered outside of the governor’s mansion in San Juan on Friday afternoon to protest against LUMA Energy, the struggling energy grid’s private operator, following a wave of electrical blackouts that affected thousands of customers across the island this week.
The gathering took place on Calle Fortaleza, where protests against former Gov. Ricky Rossello in 2019 led to his ousting and where Puerto Ricans often congregate to express grievances against the island’s government. The street is dubbed “Calle de la Resistencia” — the street of the resistance.
The island workers’ movement organized the protest, and members of environmental, feminist and LGBT organizations and electric workers and teachers’ unions attended. Protest leaders stood atop a pickup truck, singing slogans as others played tambourines and banged on pots and pans. Others held Puerto Rican flags — in the traditional red and blue as well as black, for resistance — while marching in a conga line.
Carmen Fuentes Padilla, 61, who uses a wheelchair, was among those who went to the San Juan protest.
She told The Miami Herald that her electric service has gotten worse since LUMA, the private operator that runs the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, transmission and distribution lines, began operations in June. Every time the power goes out, her husband has to manually adjust her bed, which is electric to help her get in and out.
“What LUMA has is a farce,” she said. “The electricity goes out three or four times a day. The bill comes at $400 every month.”
Franshesca Peralta, another attendee, said she went home every day not knowing if she would have power.
“The injustice that the government and LUMA are doing is sweeping us away as if it were a tremendous hurricane,” she said. “There is a great need in Puerto Rico, many sick people, many children who cannot leave their home and be without electricity for six or eight hours. It’s unacceptable.”
On Sunday, PREPA said that sargassum — a brown seaweed that travels the Atlantic Ocean in floating masses — was affecting Aguirre and Palo Seco, two principal power generation plants on Puerto Rico’s coasts.
PREPA uses ocean water to cool down its equipment, which has grills and screens to stop algae from entering its systems. But they were not able to block the high volume of seaweed, said Alexis Cruz, the engineer in charge of the Aguirre unit.
“Once it affects that flow of seawater into the condensers, they lose efficiency and when they lose efficiency, the turbo generator cannot work under these conditions, so it goes out of service,” he said.
Other problems, including boiler ruptures and a lubricating-oil leak, also occurred, according to PREPA, which said about three feet of seaweed had affected the units on Sunday.
As a result, LUMA Energy began selective power outages due to limited generation, affecting customers for hours at a time. The company has emphasized that electricity generation falls on PREPA, and has referred clients to the utility’s webpage for more information.
“When demand exceeds generation, the available power is distributed throughout the system by reducing load,” LUMA said in a news release, “which involves disconnecting parts of the grid in sequence to relieve pressure on the fragile power grid and ensure a stable supply throughout the system.”
At the protest, attendees questioned with song whether seaweed had been the cause of the outages.
“Con el cuento del sargazo, privatizan de un plumazo,” they chanted. “With the story of the sargassum, they privatize with a stroke of the pen.”
Puerto Rico’s vulnerable and outdated power grid faced significant challenges long before the arrival of LUMA Energy, a North American alliance formed by companies ATCO and Quanta Services. Hurricane Maria devastated the power infrastructure in 2017 and plunged the island into darkness. Restoring power in full took months, with some places running on generators for more than a year.
LUMA’s leadership has promised to reduce power outages, improve customer relations and modernize the electrical system. But problems have continued, with customers reporting their service has gotten worse. Only days after LUMA took over, nearly a million clients were left without electricity when a transformer caught fire. Documents from the private operator recognized that the length of outages worsened during its first three months of operation compared to the same period the previous year, according to an analysis from the island’s Center for Investigative Journalism. Concerns over hurricane season following Maria — and whether LUMA can handle the aftermath of a storm — are also front and center in many Puerto Rican’s minds.
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, who welcomed LUMA’s arrival, emphasized that rebuilding Puerto Rico’s energy system is a top priority of his administration, and characterized the “recurring technical failures” in PREPA as “unsustainable.”
The blackouts have rocked the utility’s top leadership. Ralph A. Kreil, an engineer who was head of PREPA’s governing board, resigned following the outages. Efran Paredes, the public utility’s executive director, also left his post. Josue Colon, who local outlets report has previously held the position, replaced Paredes.
Pierluisi said he had “full confidence” in Colon, whom he described as “the most knowledgeable and qualified person” to lead the power utility.
“I have asked him for a comprehensive maintenance plan for all PREPA’s generating plants to ensure that the generation capacity meets the needs of our people,” the governor said.
The multi-day outages caused widespread outrage on the island. There was a student strike demanding a recess as the outages continued at one of the University of Puerto Rico’s main campuses, where the student council also asked the administration to suspend classes. And people on social media have pointed out that the island’s shores have been dealing with massive amounts of smelly sargassum for months, a phenomenon scientists attribute to human pollution, along with Saharan dust clouds over the ocean and hotter temperatures.
Friday’s protests are only the latest instance of resistance against LUMA Energy. Labor unions, activists, social organizations and politicians have expressed hesitation or flat-out opposition toward the private operator, for reasons ranging from concerns over privatization of government services to quality of service. Another protest on a major expressway in San Juan is also scheduled for Oct. 15.
Todos Somos Pueblo, a collective of more than 30 local groups and social organizations, encouraged Puerto Ricans to take to the streets against LUMA. Maria de Lourdes Santiago, a senator from the Puerto Rico Independence Party, told local station RADIO ISLA on Wednesday that her party was joining the protests against LUMA.
“Few issues are as important in the daily life of the country as the issue of electrical energy,” she said. “And the precariousness to which LUMA has condemned us is simply unacceptable.”
A light rain did not deter the protesters, who spilled into the side streets near the governor’s mansion, and who kept the chants and music going through the evening.
“Ya sabemos por Maria, lo vital de la energía...” they sang. “We already know from (Hurricane) Maria the importance of energy.”
Josue Mitja, a PREPA employee who works at a power generation plant and is a member of the electrical workers’ union UTIER, said that the crowd was there to denounce LUMA Energy and the government. In line with his union’s stance, he said the utility should be kept public.
But he also emphasized that he was there looking for solutions that can put Puerto Rico on a more stable path to electricity generation, like renewable energy.
“The alternatives are there,” he said. “And I believe that the people of Puerto Rico have the best resources to do that. It has been demonstrated in the earthquakes, in Maria. Those resources have always gone the extra mile and have shown it.”
