Electricity sales rebound in Puerto Rico after most power restored
After the longest blackout in U.S. history, electricity sales in Puerto Rico have returned to pre-Hurricane Maria levels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm, hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, two weeks after Hurricane Irma passed just north of the island.
Immediately after Maria, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) utility reported that all 1,570,000 of its electricity customers were without power. The storm destroyed much of the island’s transmission and distribution infrastructure causing the outages to linger.
In 2016, electricity sales in Puerto Rico totaled 17.3 million megawatt hours (MWh) but fell to 13.8 million MWh in 2017 due to the hurricanes. In October 2017, the total sales dropped to 0.3 million MWh after the storms.
As of April 2018, 95 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity customers had their power restored. However, about 62,000 customers remained without power.
Electricity customers in Puerto Rico pay, on average, higher prices than the rest of the United States. Puerto Rico residential electricity customers paid 20 cents per kilowatthour (kWh) in 2017, while the average U.S. residential customer pays a rate of 13 cents per kWh. Among U.S states only Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut pay higher electricity rates than Puerto Rico.
