SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s governor on Monday urged people to moderate their energy consumption as she warned that the island has no additional power generation capability to fall back on days after a massive blackout hit the U.S. territory.
Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón said officials are waiting for an explanation from Luma Energy, a private company that oversees transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico, about what caused the islandwide outage on April 16. It affected 1.4 million customers and left more than 400,000 others without water.
The governor announced that two subcommittees have been created: one to help the island’s so-called energy czar to audit Luma’s contract and another to identify potential companies to replace Luma if its contract is terminated.
“There have been multiple incidents,” she said when asked whether the blackout was reason enough to cancel Luma’s contract, something she pledged to do while campaigning for governor. “The operator sold itself as an expert. … That perception of expertise has proven to be false.”
