More than 160,000 LUMA Energy customers in Puerto Rico were without electricity on Tuesday night, October 27, after mechanical failures at the San Juan and Aguirre power plants left too little generation to meet peak demand. According to LUMA’s MiLUMA portal, 160,921 customers, or 10.96% of the total customer base, were without power at 8:00 PM. The hardest-hit regions were Arecibo (39,683 customers), San Juan (28,691), Ponce (27,870) and Caguas (25,952).
The Bayamón (20,990), Mayagüez (17,430) and Carolina (305) operational regions also reported outages caused by forced load shedding. Earlier in the afternoon, LUMA had warned of a high probability of service interruptions during the evening. In written statements, the company said operational data projected a shortfall of about 311 megawatts (MW), attributed to failures in Unit 5 of the San Juan plant and in one of the generating units at the Aguirre plant.
LUMA press spokesman Hugo Sorrentino had said the deficit meant that "more than 100,000 customers could possibly be affected by load shedding," a figure that was ultimately exceeded by nightfall.