November 15 was the day Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rosselló and his administration had set a goal that the island would be at 50% power generation during the now almost two-month recovery from Hurricane María.
That information was posted on status.pr at 6am on November 15:
A few hours later, there was a major power outage:
FYI, on the day @ricardorossello set a 50% power generation goal for #PuertoRico, PREPA reports a major power line outage that would reduce this number. https://t.co/EKrcJy1htl
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
More power outages on day @ricardorossello said goal of 50% power generation was set to be met. https://t.co/3rO4b7K9TR
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
Soon enough, that 50% number had changed.
Via PREPA: Due to today's technical failure, the % of generation decreased from 50 to 22. We are back up to 29% in order to get back to 50% and we will continue work to reach 80%, the November 30 goal set by @ricardorossello #PuertoRico https://t.co/Dp0zb28nld
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
The following is a series of tweets that translate the government’s official press release to the power outage:
(November 15, 2017 – La Fortaleza, San Juan) The Secretary of Public Affairs and Public Policy, Ramón Rosario Cortés, reported that just after reaching 50 percent of power generation, PREPA reported an interruption of the service in the metropolitan area.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
At the time, Rosario Cortés notified that PREPA's technical staff is working to normalize the system and return to the pre-failure state. The failure affected the municipalities of Bayamón, Guaynabo, San Juan and Carolina, among others.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
The secretary said that the PREPA's director of generation, Justo González, reported that the technical failure in unit 7 of the San Juan plant caused the outage of line 50100 (230 thousand volts) that runs from the Cambalache plant in Arecibo to the Manatí Transmission Center.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
"We will continue investigating the cause of today's failure because it happened just after the fulfillment of the [50% goal]. We continue working to put the other 230kv line into operation from Aguirre to give the system greater stability, "said the Secretary.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
"We will continue investigating the cause of today's failure because it happened just after the fulfillment of the [50% goal]. We continue working to put the other 230kv line into operation from Aguirre to give the system greater stability, "said the Secretary.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
The failure was reported around 11:00 a.m. and, according to PREPA, by 12:45 p.m., service at the Medical Center, the La Plata and Carraízo dams, the Hato Rey and Santurce areas, as well as the Manatí and Bayamón sectors, had been restored.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) November 15, 2017
Meanwhile, journalist Manuel E. Rivera tweeted the following about the power outage:
Una fuente me indica que forzaron el sistema para cumplir meta de 50 por ciento. Al hacerlo, aumentó demanda repentina y colapsó de nuevo el sistema. Lo van a negar pero la fuente es buena. @AEEONLINE @ricardorossello @jaramilloutier
— Manuel E. Rivera (@manuelernestopr) November 15, 2017
“A source tells me that they forced the system to reach the 50% power goal. Upon doing so, it created immediate demand, causing the system to collapse. It will be denied, but the source is a good one.”
