PREPA outages leave customers in the Carolina, Trujillo Alto, San Juan and Guaynabo sectors without electricity

Various disruptions in the power lines running between the transmission centers of Sabana Llana and Monacillos de la Authority for electricity (AEE) this morning left more than 45,000 subscribers without electricity from the Carolina, Trujillo Alto, San Juan and Guaynabo sectors.

The state company’s Chief of Technical Operations, Carlos Alvarado, indicated that while the service has already begun recovery in some sectors of Carolina, the Conquistador and Encantada substations in Trujillo Alto remain out of service and sectors of this municipality and San Juan.

Alvarado specified that the main error was caused by a line called “overhead” falling on a bus bar, causing the bus and lines 3100 and 37900 to go out of service.

“An ‘overhead’ of the structure where the 115 bar is broken, falling on the 3100 line, a 38,000 kilowatt line, putting the 115 bar out of service and the 37900 line also with the effect. Line 3900 runs from Sabana Llana to Monacillos and has affected the Conquistador and Encantada substations, ”he said. The new day.

The other outage was reported near the old Carolina Driver Services Center (Cesco) in Carolina, where another overhead line fell.

Despite this, Alvarado said the Escorial, Sabana Llana and Carolina Pueblo substations already have electricity. The rest of the pitches that remain without electricity can be supplied with power between midday and late afternoon when they power the Conquistador and Encantada substations.

“We are mobilizing island construction workers to handle both situations, the stretch from Monacillos to Conquistador as well as that from Sabana Llana to Encantada, where Cesco de Carolina is located. In both sections we are talking about structures over 100 feet high, so we need specialized equipment to work on them, ”he said.

The Chairman of the Union of Workers of the Electricity and Irrigation Industry (Utier, for the English acronym), Jaime Figueroa Jaramillo, for his part, condemned in WKAQ-580 AM that The breakdown was foreseen yesterday and nothing was done about it because a specialized truck to solve this type of malfunction has been damaged for seven months..

“This error was discovered yesterday. Yesterday, what we called a hotspot in Sabana Llana’s transmission center. Do you know why it was not corrected? Because we didn’t have a truck. The truck broke down in an accident seven months ago in Puerto Nuevo and in seven months those running the authority, who are the same ones running it for the past three years, have not had the capacity to deal with the problem. “, he detailed.

According to Jaramillo, this truck has the ability to connect “live” to lines 115 and 230. “The companions become part of the line, but because they didn’t have that truck available, that hotspot at switch 115 and 230 could not be repaired yesterday . Happiness and truth, it might happen and it won’t happen, but it happened, ”the union leader complained.

Alvarado, however, denied that the hotspot discovered yesterday and the damaged truck are linked to the outage that left thousands of subscribers without electricity. He assured that today’s event is an ‘isolated situation’.

“That information is incorrect. Yesterday, one of the inspectors did some of the maintenance we do in Sabana Llana to find hotspots. He found a hotspot on the transformer bank downstairs. It has nothing to do with this morning’s situation. There was an ‘overhead’ this morning and the San Juan Unit is working with that hotspot. It has nothing to do with it, it has nothing to do with the situation this morning, ”he said.

When asked what the truck is like, Alvarado indicated that he will be out of service after the accident due to ongoing investigations, but defended that PREPA has purchased two vehicles of this type that have not yet arrived on the island.