After going months without electricity due to the massive impact of Hurricane Maria in 2017, the government of Puerto Rico has announced a “solution” to its energy crisis: privatize the public monopoly that was responsible for this basic service. .
Ricardo Roselló, then leader of the island – who resigned amid protests after conversations in which he uttered misogynistic and homophobic slurs emerged – said at the time that the network would become “modern, efficient and less expensive “.
Four years later, the privatization of the energy company is far from keeping its promises and the whole of the territory is in a fragile situation due to the constant atmospheric phenomena which affect it.
On the island, power cuts continue.
As happened on September 19, after the scourge caused by Hurricane Fiona, which arrived in category 2, with winds of 137 km / h, and caused a blackout which took about a month to be fully repaired.
But before the storm, life for Puerto Ricans was already hampered by constant power outages.
Under the administration of Luma Energy, which began in June 2021, the average duration of power outages has worsened, says Jonathan Castillo Polanco, a professor specializing in environmental health and climate change, who is also responsible for renewable energy. long. Hispanic Federation.
“With the new operator of the energy distribution and transmission network, everything has changed for the worse. These are public data,” he told BBC News Mundo, the Spanish service of the BBC.
According to the expert, figures from the Department of Energy, a public body that must oversee the private monopoly, indicate that on average, a customer in Puerto Rico spent 1,268 minutes without power during Luma’s first year. Energy.
Whereas before the company arrived, the expert calculated, the time was 1,243 minutes, which is an increase of 25 minutes.
All this despite the fact that the US Congress allocated around $10 billion to rebuild the electricity system after Hurricane Maria, which destroyed infrastructure.
Although the crisis was born decades ago, in the last five years the situation has become even more serious.
Image: Getty Images
Although the crisis originated decades ago, in the past five years it has become common for hospitals in Puerto Rico to be without power for hours, leading to the use of generators for patients. who need hospital machines. It is also common for young people to study with flashlights in the dark of night.
There are those who blame Luma Energy for the situation. The company did not respond to a BBC News Mundo interview request, but it insists on its website that it has installed thousands of new electric light poles, launched 52 retrofit projects and reduced the number of failures but not the average duration of failures.
In this context, BBC News Mundo has analyzed the causes of the energy crisis that is affecting Puerto Rico and which is jeopardizing the daily lives of its inhabitants.
The origin of Luma Energy
Luma Energy is a US-Canadian consortium that began operating in the territory in June 2021, after a bidding process that was not entirely public.
The contract signed in Puerto Rico guarantees the administration of the central areas of the electrical system for 15 years, through services such as transmission, distribution, collection and customer service. She receives monthly payments of up to $1.5 billion.
Power-generating factories built decades ago that run on fuels expensive fossils, remained in the hands of the government.
After the Hurricane Maria disaster, some Puerto Ricans were left without power for a year.
Image: Getty Images
Additionally, as part of the deal, the consortium will not have to invest in rebuilding the island’s infrastructure, but will handle revitalization with funds approved by the US federal government.
“These processes have a degree of secrecy because they are negotiations, but in any other US jurisdiction the privatization would have been done with more clarity to the public. We don’t know what terms were rejected in the transaction,” says Ramon Luis Nieves. , a lawyer specializing in energy issues, who was a senator in Puerto Rico before the arrival of Luma Energy.
When the contract was signed, Nieves continues, there was some opposition from some sectors of the population, but another large part supported it. Especially since it happened after the Hurricane Maria disaster, when some Puerto Ricans were left without power for up to a year while the system was operated by the government.
Why does electricity fail so often in Puerto Rico?
The complex electrical system operated by Luma Energy, designed in the 1960s, is located primarily in southern Puerto Rico, away from the demand for electricity, which is to the north by the capital San Juan and industrialized areas.
The Palo Seco Power Plant, located in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, is one of the few power plants in the north of the island.
Image: Reuters
From there, says Jonathan Castillo Polanco, miles and miles of power lines extend from an interconnected system that lights up all areas of Puerto Rico.
The biggest problem, he adds, is that if one of the connections or power plants fails, the whole system around the territory is affected.
“In a hurricane zone having a system like this is very vulnerable. There are miles and miles of line and if anything happens at one point on that line let it be a landslide or a tree, it leaves the whole country without electricity”, explains the specialist, who has researched the infrastructure of the electricity system.
But beyond that, the factories Puerto Rico has that run on extremely toxic fuels, such as Bunker C, have minimal capacity to meet changes in energy demand. This means that when there is a breakdown in a power station, for example, “the whole system destabilizes and stops”.
The AES generator is located in southern Puerto Rico, where almost all the factories on the island are located.
Image: Reuters
Castillo Polanco also points out that for years the electricity network has not been properly maintained. It has not been modernized either. And he believes that this is due to a “lack of political will”.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the public entity that operated energy before the arrival of Luma Energy and maintained the production plants, has a public debt of 9 billion dollars and is insolvent.
The public body, which did not respond to a request for an interview from BBC News Mundo, did not invest the money in upgrading infrastructure, but in operating expenses, such as the grant of the purchase of fuel to relieve consumers, said Castillo Polanco.
Luma Energy has made this fact one of its arguments to defend the current problems of the electrical system.
“By almost any measure, Puerto Rico has the worst-performing electrical system in the United States,” company president Wayne Stensby said in an interview with NBC in October last year, in which he acknowledged that “The biggest challenge is how quickly we can bring real improvements to our customers.
The Luma Energy workforce
But the biggest problem with privatizing the company, according to respondents, is the lack of qualified employees who know Puerto Rico’s complex electrical system.
On the island, tens of thousands of people have chosen to install battery-powered solar panel systems in their homes.
Image: Getty Images
When privatization took place, faced with a possible change in their wages and benefits, about 3,000 workers in the state-owned company requested transfers to other areas of government.
“Knowing Puerto Rico’s energy system takes years of experience. All that knowledge is now in other areas,” says attorney Nieves.
“The people brought in by the company didn’t know how to exploit the complexity of the network,” adds Castillo Polanco.
According to Department of Energy data released in August, Luma Energy has about 1,200 employees in the territory. But the company in all its public communications claims to have 3,000 workers.
“While Luma Energy asks an employee to attend to a situation on the grid, hours pass while that employee tries to figure out what’s going on,” says former Senator Nieves.
What would be the solution?
Puerto Rico’s electricity grid, Castillo Polanco tells BBC News Mundo, must become a decentralized system, with microgrids and powered by renewable sources.
The system, he continues, should have the ability to connect to each other to meet the energy demand, but also, if there is an error in one area, the others should be able to isolate themselves and operate in a autonomous.
On the island, he points out, tens of thousands of people have chosen to install battery-powered solar panel systems in their homes. But this poses a problem of inequality, because poor communities, which do not have the economic capacity to acquire them, remain connected to the network with problems.
And that, he says, will be the main challenge Puerto Rico will face in the future, when it invests the money earmarked by the US government to seek “energy justice for all”.
But the rebuilding process, estimated by the island’s own state-owned company, could take around 10 years.
Protest against Luma Energy
Image: Getty Images
Of the US$10 billion allocated by Congress, Nives says only about US$40 million has been used, due to bureaucratic impositions by US agencies and Luma Energy management.
Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans continue to face power outages day after day.
– This text was published in https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-63307140
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