About 170,000 LUMA Energy customers lost power Wednesday night, with more than 8,000 still without service Thursday morning, according to José Pérez, LUMA's vice president of operations. The outage began around 8:00 p.m. at the Sabana Llana substation and triggered a cascading effect from the Canóvanas area to San Juan. Pérez said crews safely and quickly restored service to about 90 percent of affected customers within roughly two hours.
LUMA personnel are currently working at the substation site, running tests to determine the cause. Pérez explained that equipment in the distribution area, which handles lower voltage, caught fire, causing the substation to go into lockout and shut down. He said the substation is now back in service except for the area still being tested.
He clarified that the roughly 8,000 customers still without power are affected by routine, ordinary outages, not the previous night's event. Pérez said he expects a clearer picture during the day of what caused the failure, what LUMA is doing about it, and how the utility will work to prevent a recurrence.