POWER November 2016 - 11

3. A blaze and then darkness. A fire at a substation of the oil-fired Aguirre power
plant (shown here) in southeast Puerto Rico triggered a 50-hour-long island-wide blackout beginning
September 21. Courtesy: PREPA
their comparatively low GDP per capita under
$20,000 compared to $52,000, makes
the blackout a painful punctuation mark
in an otherwise cruel joke, " said Dante
Disparte, founder and CEO of risk and capital
management firm Risk Cooperative in
a scathing opinion piece published in the
Huffington Post in October. " Puerto Rico's
blackout, like our other forgotten crises,
remind us it is time to act. "
Massive Scottish Tidal
Stream Project's First 1.5MW
Turbines Are Unveiled
Four 1.5-MW tidal stream turbines that will
make up the first phase of the massive MeyGen
project proposed for installation in the
Pentland Firth, have been fully assembled.
Three of the turbines were built by Andritz
Puerto Rico Substation
Fire Causes Three-Night
Blackout
This September, Puerto Rico suffered an
island-wide blackout that left 1.5 million
utility customers without power for more
than 50 hours and reportedly resulted in
multimillion-dollar losses for its already
troubled economy.
The blackout in the U.S. territory with
a population of about 3.5 million occurred
on September 21, when a blaze
erupted in a substation at the 900-MW
Aguirre power plant (Figure 3) located in
the southeastern part of the island. Two
transmission lines of 230 kV each also
failed, said the Puerto Rico Electric Power
Authority (PREPA).
Power failures aren't uncommon in
Puerto Rico, which has suffered from economic
problems for nearly a decade. PREPA,
too, is financially stricken, mired in
debt of $9 billion that some observers allege
stems from years of mismanagement.
But the September blackout was unusual
because it lasted nearly three nights.
Nearly a week after the event, on September
28, Puerto Rico Senator Ramón Luis
told reporters that there were still people
without power service.
As well as causing traffic snarls and disrupting
train services in San Juan, island
authorities said 15 fires broke out during
the blackout, owing to malfunctioning
generators. Water service across the island
was also affected.
During a hearing to investigate the grid
failure held by a Puerto Rico senate committee
barely two weeks after the blackout,
experts noted that the country's infrastrucCIRCLE
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November 2016 | POWER
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11
ture remains dilapidated, despite borrowing
million of dollars over the past few years.
Criticism of PREPA has begun to crescendo
since the event. " Not only are
Puerto Rican's suffering from extortionately
high energy costs averaging between
4-6 times higher than the U.S. mainland,
Hydro Hammerfest. Tidal power generation
firm Atlantis Resources, which owns 85%
of the MeyGen project, built the remaining
one, an AR1500 model. The turbines will be
installed in the Pentland Firth, a strait that
separates the Orkney Islands from Caithness
in the far north of Scotland, as part of the
demonstration phase (Phase 1A).
The project has extensive backing from
the Scottish government. It was financed

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POWER November 2016

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