LUMA Energy maintenance sparks outage fears across Puerto Rico

LUMA Energy announced scheduled maintenance and network upgrades for Monday, July 6, affecting eight municipalities in Puerto Rico. The work, slated to run from early morning until evening, includes line replacements, equipment repairs and automation upgrades that could cause temporary power interruptions lasting up to 12 hours, impacting sites such as the National Guard headquarters, museums, schools and residential neighborhoods.

Union leader Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo of the Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego (UTIER) warned that the island’s generation reserve is critically low amid the summer heat. He said the available reserve stands at only 580 megawatts, far below what is needed if temperatures rise or other units go offline. The union pointed to recent repairs on generation units at Costa Sur and Central Aguirre, noting that some units remain offline and may take hours to return to service, heightening the risk of blackouts.