Power restored to more than 96 percent of customers in Puerto Rico 6 months after hurricanes, officials testify to House panel
Six months after Puerto Rico was hit by two catastrophic hurricanes, electric service has been restored to more than 96 percent of customers, but nearly 50,000 are still without power, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ mission leading the restoration is scheduled to end May 18 when it will relinquish the role to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
Hurricane Irma raked Puerto Rico Sept. 6, 2017, as a Category 5 storm. Then on Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria made a direct hit on the island. Many citizens were killed and nearly all of the island’s 1.5 million electric customers lost electricity and other vital services.
U.S. government officials testified about the status of the restoration Wednesday in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
The restoration on the 3,500-square mile island has been hindered by bureaucracy, geographic isolation from crews, difficult terrain, supply issues and the limitations of the existing grid, said U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), chairman of the subcommittee.
“This committee will continue working to ensure that everyone in Puerto Rico has access to clean drinking water, health care, reliable telecommunications and electricity,” Harper said in his opening statement.
Crews are down to the “last mile” of the restoration, which is typically the most difficult and time consuming part because it involves remote trouble spots and many individual and isolated customers.
The island of 3.4 million people has 2,400 miles of transmission line, 30,000 miles of distribution and 300 substations. At least 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s grid was affected by the storm, said Carlos D. Torres, a consultant at the Edison Electric Institute, who has served as the Power Restoration Coordinator in Puerto Rico.
After PREPA officially requested mutual assistance on Oct. 31, nearly 60 investor-owned electric companies and public power utilities committed crews, equipment and/or material to the effort, Torres said. By early 2018 nearly 6,000 workers were assigned to the task, including crews from the mainland and those working for PREPA.
Torres worked at Consolidated Edison in New York for more than 30 years and, in prepared testimony, said he had overseen Con Edison’s response to Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Irene, the 9/11 attacks and the 2003 Northeast Blackout.
“However, the damage caused by Hurricane Maria is unlike anything any of us in the industry has ever seen on the mainland United States,” he said. “Without question, this power restoration mission has been the most challenging of my career.”
“Having lived on the island now for five months, I can tell you that the people of Puerto Rico are the most resilient people I have ever met in my life,” he added. “While their resiliency is admirable, nobody deserves to be without electricity for this long.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t ordinarily restore electric service in natural disasters but has been working on this assignment for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) asked what the Corps will do on May 18 if there are still customers out of service.
“We’re going to do everything possible to get as close to 100 percent as possible,” said Charles “Ray” Alexander, director, Contingency Operations and Homeland Security for the Corps. “This is the most difficult terrain. The production rates are going to be hard to estimate.”
Work is now occurring in some of the most rugged, remote, mountainous, densely forested and hard-to-access areas in Puerto Rico, Alexander said. Crews, equipment and supplies need to be ferried in by helicopter. But the Corps is committed to restoring as many customers as possible.
“We will stay there as long as we have to and we have the authority and the resources,” he said.
Before the storms, Puerto Rico’s electric system was poised for failure. Burdened with $9 billion in debt, PREPA had filed for bankruptcy in July 2017. The organization suffered from a diminishing workforce and aging infrastructure. Its plants were an average of 44 years old.
As the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season approaches, Alexander emphasized that because of the work that has been done, the electric system is stronger than it was before the 2017 hurricanes.
“It’s no secret that the grid was in very poor condition before the storm hit. It is in much better condition today,” he said.
“We’ve put in place new transmission and distribution lines, towers and poles, other power generation equipment,” he added. “It’s not the resilient grid that we all recognize is needed. But it is in much better condition.”
Hearing assurances that Puerto Rico’s system is better prepared today than before the 2017 hurricanes, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), was unequivocal in stating his expectation. “We are better prepared,” he said. “If we get hit again we want to be back up a lot sooner.”
As recently as April 4, the Corps had 1,126 people working on the island, including 900 contractors. Alexander said the Corps has since started a drawdown of personnel but still has about 500 contractors on the island. PREPA has about 800 people working and its contractor has another 600.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) asked what steps have been taken to modernize Puerto Rico’s grid, to improve the system’s resilience and minimize the risk of similar destruction in the future.
The U.S. Department of Energy has been building a model to help engineers analyze the island’s electric system. The model will help engineers determine where best to install power generators, for example, configure a microgrid or establish distributed energy resources, said Bruce J. Walker, assistant secretary of the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability in the Department of Energy.
A day after Maria hit Puerto Rico, FEMA had 3.500 people on the island and by Sept. 29 there were 10,000 federal personnel at work on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The agency moved massive amounts of equipment and people in an environment with limited aviation and port facilities, said Jeffrey Byard, associate administrator of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery.
“In this situation we quickly had to realize that we were in the final mile for a long time,” Byard said. “There’s a lot of work to do and the book’s not written on the unique opportunity that we have to recover Puerto Rico in a more resilient fashion.”
“We will be in the impacted communities for as long as we’re needed,” Byard added.
Under the FEMA assignment, the Corps installed more than 1,900 temporary emergency power generators on Puerto Rico and 180 in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the largest temporary power mission in FEMA’s history. The mission continues to prioritize critical facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, communications facilities and water treatment plants.
As of April 5, FEMA had approved $1.4 billion in emergency assistance for Puerto Rico and $450 million for the U.S. Virgin Islands, which includes funds for power restoration. The agency also is providing funds for permanent work projects including $245 million for Puerto Rico and $180 million for the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In written testimony, Byard said FEMA also is working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on its authority to provide up to $2 billion for “enhanced or improved electrical power systems.”
A congressional delegation visited Puerto Rico in December to see the damage and the restoration.
If the system is not rebuilt to a higher standard, “we’re going to be seeing a repeat of this over and over again,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), ranking Democrat on the subcommittee and a member who visited the island. “Even where service has been restored, service is unreliable,” she added.
“We just can’t overestimate the impact,” DeGette said. “We have to have a reliable grid. It’s fundamental to Puerto Rico’s economy and all aspects of life on the island. They can’t keep their businesses going, they can’t keep their homes going, if they don’t have a reliable grid.”
