The sudden outage of the EcoEléctrica power plant in Peñuelas and Unit 2 of the Aguirre power plant in Salinas caused load-shedding events on Tuesday that left, at their peak, more than 377,000 customers without electric service.

Power service began to be restored between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. At 6:10 a.m. Wednesday, LUMA Energy’s service status portal reported that only 3,719 customers remained without power.

In an interview with El Nuevo Día, energy consortium spokesperson Hugo Sorrentini explained that Aguirre Unit 2 began losing capacity at 7:50 p.m., when it stopped producing about 125 megawatts (MW), and at approximately 8:00 p.m. it went completely offline.

Meanwhile, Genera PR spokesperson Iván Báez told the publication that the unit was taken out of operation after a failure was detected in the suction pumps.

“We removed it in a controlled manner, but we are certainly working on troubleshooting to bring the unit back into service,” Báez explained.

Later, Sorrentini said, the EcoEléctrica plant also went offline, representing the loss of more than 500 additional MW of generation capacity.

Meanwhile, EcoEléctrica President, engineer Carlos Reyes Berríos, said in a written statement that “around 8:25 p.m., a chain of events caused the shutdown of EcoEléctrica’s three generation units. Our personnel are investigating the cause and working on the stabilization of the processes. Once this stage is completed, we will begin the restart process of the units.”

At 11:15 p.m., LUMA Energy’s service status portal showed more than 314,000 customers without service. The total included customers in all service areas covered by the consortium.

At the same time, Genera PR’s generation portal showed 2,442 MW of available generation and only 41 MW in reserve. The three EcoEléctrica units remained offline.

Sorrentini explained that the number of affected customers would depend on electricity demand and on how much generation capacity could be added back into the system.

“The more generation available, the more customers can have service. The opposite is also true. The less generation available, unfortunately, the fewer customers we will be able to provide service to,” he stated.

The official added that, due to the lack of reserves, the power interruptions could continue for several hours.

“Typically, load-shedding events are resolved within minutes when there are rotating reserves available. However, because there are no reserves and the situation has become more complicated with the loss of other units, they are expected to last for hours or until consumption decreases or additional generation is added,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Báez said Genera PR technicians would work through the night to return Aguirre Unit 2 to the system and announced that the company would provide an update on the work at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday through its social media channels.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.