Deep Dive: Puerto Rico’s Grid Reboot

Puerto Rico’s Grid: Built to Break

For all the talk of hurricanes and climate change, Puerto Rico’s power grid mostly collapses under the weight of itself. It isn’t the fuel type that makes it fragile — it’s the hardware, the layout, and decades of political rot that left an island of 3.2 million people with a grid that looks like it’s still running on dial-up.

How the System Actually Works

Puerto Rico operates a self-contained electrical island — no interstate backstops, no interconnects. When it fails, there’s nowhere to pull power from.

Here’s the grid by the numbers:

• Customers served: ~1.47 million

• Peak demand: ~3,000 MW

• Total installed capacity: ~5,800 MW (but as much as 40–60% is often offline)

• Transmission network: ~450 mi of 230 kV lines and 500 mi of 115 kV lines

• Primary operator: LUMA Energy (transmission + distribution); PREPA → Genera PR (generation)

Generation mix (approx. 2024):

• 62 % Oil-fired steam and peakers (~3,600 MW)

• 25 % Natural gas (~1,400 MW, mainly at San Juan and EcoEléctrica)

• 8 % Coal (~450 MW at AES Guayama)

• 5 % Renewables (solar + wind + hydro, < 300 MW total)

The problem isn’t oil or gas. The problem is that most of these plants were built when Ford was still selling Pintos, and they’re concentrated on the southern coast — far from where most Puerto Ricans actually live. Electricity has to crawl north across mountains on a handful of high-voltage corridors. Lose one, and the island blacks out.

Why It Breaks So Easily

Let’s drop the slogans and look at physics and logistics:

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