puerto rico's power problems
Why is it that Puerto Rico continues to have major issues with the generation and transmission of electrical power?
Based on my “vast experience” in power grids—OK, I have none, but I’ll surmise the following:
Not building for resilience in the first place
Piecemeal construction of the grid
Failure to invest in preventive maintenance of all components in the grid
Inability to innovate over the years and only “survive” in generating/transmitting power
Lack of investment in new infrastructure
Electrical rates that don’t support the above
Recuring disasters that only piecemeal the system back together
Poor management and leadership at the top
No emphasis on things that are “unseen” that come back to bite you
The list above is likely not that perfect. See this AP article, Nearly all of Puerto Rico is without power on New Year’s Eve
Noted in it and then also in an NPR story on the outage is the fact that millions of dollars in disaster recovery funds have yet to be spent. The 2017 Hurricane Maria was a $100B disaster. And, generators from FEMA are still on the island and providing power.
Then, remember when you hear stories about power outages, the company will announce X number of customers without power, estimated at 1.4M for this event. The population of Puerto Rico is something like 3.29M.
Lastly, climate refugees…the population of the island for the 2020 Census is about 11% less than the previous census. For Maria itself, it is estimated that 130,000 people left the island.
Happy New Year—my first blog post of 2025!
