USA Today, April 2025
Crews once again worked to restore power in Puerto Rico after a massive blackout, the latest to the strike the island’s beleaguered power grid. An islandwide blackout hit the U.S. territory April 16, an issue Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón called “unacceptable.” By the morning of April 18, nearly all customers had their power restored, according to LUMA Energy.
The already fragile power grid has been repeatedly damaged by hurricanes, leading to regular rolling blackouts. About 1.2 million customers spent New Year’s Eve without power in a massive outage that took days to resolve. And compounding crises driven by climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and fiscal pressures have pushed the grid to the breaking point, Cecilio Ortiz García, co-founder of the University of Puerto Rico’s National Institute of Energy and Island Sustainability previously told USA TODAY.
