• Puerto Rico's power was restored after a New Year's Eve blackout sent the island into darkness.
• Still, the island's power company warned that there could be more electricity outages.
• Local business owners in San Juan told BI about their struggles to recover.

Small business owners and workers in Puerto Rico say they're struggling to recover from a massive power outage earlier this week that left the entire island without electricity.

Puerto Rico's electricity has mostly been restored after the blackout on New Year's Eve cut the power for more than 1.2 million customers. But the local energy company warned that it may need to schedule more rolling outages because the power grid is so fragile.

One business owner told BI that they'd tried their best to recover from the New Year's Eve outage. The power is back on, but now they're struggling to get the point-of-sale system back online.

"It's very, very surreal because we were about to have the whole system online today — and the technicians were already working before we opened the lunch service — and all of a sudden the system went out again," Gabriel Hernandez, the chef and co-owner of Verde Mesa restaurant in San Juan, told Business Insider.

The restaurant had already had to cancel its New Year's Eve dinner service because even though power was restored on Tuesday afternoon, it was too late to scramble to open.

"Once the power's restored, there's another layer of work that has to be done, which is to check our produce, check if our refrigerators are working, check our antenna and WiFi," Hernandez said.

And in the days since, he's also had to reduce the restaurant's seating capacity to below 50% of normal, he said. The blackout caused the restaurant's WiFi antenna to go out, downing the point-of-sale system.

Operating at less than half capacity has been especially difficult during one of the busiest weeks of the year, he said. He estimated the restaurant's losses are already in the thousands of dollars.

And, he said, the restaurant will never be able to make that back. "Unless we have somebody inject money that we lost, we don't recuperate money," Hernandez said.

Puerto Rico's power company warns of more outages

Luma Energy, the private company that transmits and distributes power in the territory, said in an X post on Thursday morning that 99% of its 1.4 million customers were back in service. It didn't respond to multiple inquiries from Business Insider.

The company urged customers to limit their energy consumption and use backup energy wherever possible as the electric system gets back up to speed. Luma initially attributed the blackout to the failure of an underground cable, but said on Thursday the cause was still under investigation.

The island-wide blackout, which happened around dawn on Tuesday, threw the New Year's Eve plans of the territory's more than 3 million residents into disarray.

The owner of another restaurant in San Juan, who didn't want to be named, told BI that she lost about a thousand dollars worth of refrigerated items — mostly produce and fish — when the power went out on Tuesday.

Luckily, she said, the restaurant was already closed that day, but because she doesn't have backup generators, she couldn't save her perishable inventory. And her restaurant's margins are already very slim, she said, so it won't be easy to make back that lost money.

Hotels, too, lost money during this week's power outage. Jose Lopez told Business Insider that the small eight-room hotel Villa Herencia, where he works in San Juan, had to refund a few guests who left early during Tuesday's outage.

But, he said, power service has been good since it was restored, and the hotel hasn't experienced any smaller outages.

One café worker in San Juan, who didn't want to be named, said that while his café suffered some losses this week, it was able to continue operating through the blackout thanks to its generator. People from around the neighborhood were able to come in and get food during the outage, he said.

Though some businesses and residences had their power restored by Tuesday afternoon or evening, others had to wait longer. Ryan Pamplin, a 36-year-old business owner, told BI that the power at his house in Dorado took 23 hours to come back on. Once it did, it went out again a few hours later and remained out for most of New Year's Day.

The island's power system has been an issue for a long time

Puerto Rico has for years dealt with a sometimes rickety power system, highlighted in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022.

Tuesday's widespread outage came as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, has been trying to restructure its debt, which The Associated Press said stood at more than $9 billion.

Puerto Rico's new governor, Jenniffer González Colón, who was sworn in on Thursday, has called out the territory's ailing power grid and promised that stabilizing it will be her top priority.

• A massive blackout in Puerto Rico left more than 1.3 million power-company customers in the dark.
• The power company, Luma Energy, said restoring power could take up to 48 hours.
• It said the outage appeared to have been caused by the failure of an underground power line.

A massive blackout hit Puerto Rico early Tuesday — and it could take days to restore power.

The outage, which happened around dawn, initially left nearly 90% of the private power company Luma Energy's 1.47 million customers without power, the company told The Associated Press.

Luma, in a statement, called the blackout island-wide. It said the issue appeared to have stemmed from the failure of an underground cable, though it also said the cause was still under investigation. The utility said that fully restoring power could take 24 to 48 hours.

On social media, Luma said it had begun restoring power in phases. The utility said that by 11 a.m. local time it had restored power to the Municipal Hospital of San Juan, among other locations. It said that as of 1 p.m., it had restored power to 44,700 customers, or about 3% of its customers without power. And by 3 p.m., it said it had restored power to more than 73,000 customers.

As of Tuesday afternoon, at least 1.1 million customers remained without power throughout the US island territory.

"Luma teams remain focused on the complex process of restoring service to all affected customers," the company said in a translated statement.

Puerto Rico has for years dealt with a sometimes rickety power system, highlighted in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022.

Luma is in charge of distributing energy across the island, while a company called Genera PR provides the power. The New York Times said both had been under scrutiny because of the territory's frequent outages.

Ryan Pamplin, the CEO and cofounder of BlendJet who's based in Dorado, Puerto Rico, told Business Insider that Tuesday's blackout was "definitely the worst that I've seen in four years of living here."

"I've never seen — even during a hurricane — I've never seen the entire island lose power," he said.

Pamplin said power wasn't the only problem during a blackout. He said water pressure in Puerto Rico is typically low, and pumps are used to help increase it — but when the power goes out, so do the pumps. He said he'd never seen the water pressure in Dorado drop so low.

He said that there was no water coming out of his faucets on Tuesday and that only one of his toilets was sort of flushing.

In a statement posted on Facebook, translated by the Times, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said, "We are demanding answers."

He said the two power companies "must expedite the restart of the generating units outside the fault area and keep the people duly informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout the island."

The widespread outage comes as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, has been trying to restructure its debt, which the AP said stood at more than $9 billion.

Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, argued on X that the federal government needed to step up and "end this cycle of insanity" as the island grapples with its unreliable electric grid.

A report from the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the City University of New York said more than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans lived in the New York metropolitan area in 2022.

Pablo José Hernández Rivera, the incoming resident commissioner of Puerto Rico — the territory's nonvoting member of the House of Representatives — said in a statement that he'd alerted federal officials to the urgency of Tuesday's situation.

"Once sworn in, I will collaborate closely with Congressional leaders and the incoming administrations in Puerto Rico and the United States to deliver real, lasting solutions," he said. "Our people deserve reliable energy and a brighter future — we will not settle for less."

The governor-elect of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer González, who's set to be sworn in on Thursday, also highlighted the territory's ailing power grid on social media.

"We can't keep relying on an energy system that fails our people," González said on X. "Today's blackout and the uncertainty around restoration continue to impact our economy and quality of life."

She said that stabilizing Puerto Rico's energy grid would be her top priority when she takes office.