Costa Sur Unit 6 going offline leaves 147 thousand customers without power, then 188 thousand

On July 16, 2026, NotiCel reports that a second event, the abrupt trip of Unit 6 at the Costa Sur plant, operated by Genera PR, forced load shedding on Thursday night. A little more than 147 thousand customers were initially left without service, according to LUMA Energy. The figure later rose to 188 thousand. The URL headline speaks of 147 thousand; the body puts both layers. One is not chosen. Earlier, Energy czar Josué Colón Ortiz had reported that Costa Sur Unit 5 went offline at 1:05 p.m. because of a boiler break, with repair through Sunday night. That outage, added to San Juan 7 (100 megawatts) and Palo Seco 4 (200) and Costa Sur 5 (400), reduced available capacity by approximately 700 megawatts, according to his account.

Hugo Sorrentini, a LUMA spokesman, said personnel were going to inspect the switchyard near Costa Sur. Unit 6, he stated, went offline around 8:15 p.m. losing more than 300 megawatts. At 10:30 p.m., Josué Colón Ortiz explained that toward 8:00 the unit was generating about 337 to 340 megawatts when an explosion occurred in the transmission center, the 230-kilovolt switchyard. The disturbance, he said, affected at its peak about 190 and 200 thousand customers. Caguas and Carolina had more than 35 thousand without power; Arecibo, more than 18 thousand. Genera, according to him, found no preliminary damage in the unit and would begin the start-up. They hoped to restore it in the early hours of Friday if LUMA gave the switchyard the go-ahead. Three customer figures — 147 thousand, 188 thousand, 190 to 200 thousand — live in the same note. They are not averaged.

This July 16 trip is not LUMA's July 6 notice with Costa Sur 6 already offline, nor the July 18 announcement, in NotiCel, that that unit would remain offline about two weeks. Four dates. On July 20 this desk already has Genera's reserve-unit deadline; it is not rewritten here. The reader who wants that night's chronology has the NotiCel URL at the foot.

Source: NotiCel. https://noticel.com/noticias/20260716/salida-abruta-de-unidad-6-en-costa-sur-deja-a-sobre-147-mil-clientes-sin-energia/