Residents of San Juan and Caguas in Puerto Rico worry about another night without electricity amid the heat, after outages the day before affected more than 100,000 customers. Genera PR spokesman Iván Báez said in an interview on Metro al Mediodía that the company is working to recover generation before the period of highest demand, mainly between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Juan González, a resident of the Cádiz building in Hato Rey, fears having no fan or air conditioning during those hours.
His apartment has no generator or battery, and the building’s generators serve only common areas and elevators. In Caguas, Mónica Torres has solar panels, but she says her battery drains quickly, so she limits use to one lamp in the room she is in. Báez said Unit 5 of the San Juan plant went out of service because of a failure in its lubrication pump, and new pumps were being installed to bring it back for the peak-demand hours.
He said crews were also working to raise output at Aguirre Unit 2, whose load was reduced during maintenance and where vibrations from a fan forced work to stop for safety. He warned additional failures could occur during recovery. Costa Sur Unit 5 would stay out of service until Saturday or Sunday if transformer repairs go as planned.
Báez said load reductions at Palo Seco, tied to a low-frequency event, were resolved quickly. He did not guarantee that new load shedding will be avoided on the night of October 28.