The PREPA grid

PREPA — the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority — owned the island grid that María brought down in September 2017. Transmission and distribution collapsed. The blackout lasted, in places, months, among the longest in U.S. experience. This essay will not invent a peak megawatt or a pole count the source page does not give. It will use a later Energy Information Administration note that still describes the ordinary failures of the same system.

EIA page id 67926 was live at capture, August 10, 2026. The dated claims below are from that page.

On August 10, 2026 the EIA reported that in 2025 Puerto Rico's customers averaged 36 hours of power interruptions not caused by major events such as hurricanes, 19 percent more than in 2024. Between 2021 and 2025 the average was 29 hours a year without major events. Mainland customers, the same note says, typically see about 2 hours. Major events added 23 more hours in 2025, even in a year without a direct hurricane strike.

Frequency also rose. Excluding major-event days, interruption frequency doubled since 2021 and rose 13 percent from 2024 to 2025. The average customer saw nearly 16 interruptions in 2025, about 17 counting major-event days. A grid can fail in a storm and also fail on a Tuesday. PREPA's successors in operations — LUMA in transmission and distribution, other contractors in generation — inherited that Tuesday problem.

María is why this record shares a date with the Yabucoa strike. The TCR explains the wind. The EIA explains the reliability that remains. Neither page is a privatization brochure. Debt, fuel, vegetation, and governance sit behind the SAIDI numbers. The numbers are what can be printed without a speech.

SAIDI: average interruption duration. SAIFI: average interruption frequency. The EIA uses both, with a major-event split.

When Fiona left the island in the dark as a Category One, it was this grid, not a new Category Four, that went. If you need a moral, take it from the comparison of the mainland's 2 hours and the island's 36-hour year. Then go back to the storms for the landfall hours.

Sources: EIA Today in Energy, detalle 67926 (10 de agosto de 2026). Freeze 2026-08-22.