English

Puerto Rico Government Turns a Blind Eye to the Oversight of LUMA

By |

The Puerto Rico Energy Bureau established the minimum performance levels the company must achieve to get incentives, but not the penalties, making its oversight difficult. The Public-Private Partnerships Authority now says that LUMA will only be penalized if any investigation concludes that it failed to fulfill its responsibilities.

Los chavos de María

Breakers Where the General Blackout Happened Were To Be Replaced in December 2021 by PREPA

By |

The area in the switchyard where the Central Costa Sur fire occurred, which caused the general blackout last Wednesday, should have been renovated four months ago, in December 2021, according to the original infrastructure plan through which the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) will access $10.7 billion in federal recovery funds. But, after LUMA’s arrival in June 2021, as operator of the transmission and distribution system, the processes were delayed. The completion date for the repairs at the plant was postponed to February 2023, according to documents from the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), that the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) reviewed. 

Avería en breaker de salida de Unidad #5 de Costa Sur al 230kv ocasionó la salida de las unidades 5 y 6 de la Central. El sistema de protección del sistema eléctrico sacó de servicio el resto de las unidades que estaban generando. pic.twitter.com/ZFAR6GocY2— Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica (@AEEONLINE) April 7, 2022

The recovery work in Costa Sur, Guayanilla, included replacing four switches of the 230-kilowatt transmission lines because they have already completed their useful life and are obsolete.

Series

AES Gives Government of Puerto Rico an Ultimatum for Economic Bailout

By |

Email exchanges, meetings with key personnel from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the discussion of a Memorandum of Understanding to renegotiate AES Puerto Rico’s (AES-PR) contract with the government of Puerto Rico six years before it expires. This all has happened over the past 11 months, away from public scrutiny. However, a letter from Natalie Jaresko, executive director of the Fiscal Control Board, to PREPA’s Governing Board uncovered what until today had been a secret between AES executives and members of Pedro Pierluisi’s administration: that the coal energy producer is going through its worst economic crisis and to get out of it, is demanding that the government of Puerto Rico come to its rescue. “The cash flow problem at AES-PR is dire,” AES President Jesús Bolinaga Serfaty said in a letter written on March 24, 2021 to PREPA executives that had been kept secret, but that the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) and La Perla del Sur obtained after months of requests and the filing of a request for Mandamus for access to public information. Screenshot of the communication.

English

Journalists go to court to gain access to information on the contract renegotiation between AES and PREPA

By |

The Center for Investigative Journalism and journalist Omar Alfonso, editor of regional newspaper La Perla del Sur, on Tuesday filed a Mandamus on the constitutional right of access to public information to petition documents related to the renegotiation of the contract between coal ash company AES and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.