Hurricane Maria Effects on Puerto Rico Electric Power Infrastructure

This paper discusses the effects of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico's electric grid. Arguably, the most significant effect of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico was the electric power outage that initially affected the entire island and lasted more than ten months. Although the damage to the convent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE power and energy technology systems journal 2019-03, Vol.6 (1), p.85-94
Main Authors: Kwasinski, Alexis, Andrade, Fabio, Castro-Sitiriche, Marcel J., O'Neill-Carrillo, Efrain
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Damage assessment
Electric power
Electric power distribution
Electric power grids
Electric power transmission
Electricity distribution
Hurricanes
Infrastructure
natural disaster
Orography
Power distribution
power generation
Power grids
power transmission
Power transmission lines
Resilience
Restoration
Wind farms
Wind turbines
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Summary:This paper discusses the effects of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico's electric grid. Arguably, the most significant effect of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico was the electric power outage that initially affected the entire island and lasted more than ten months. Although the damage to the conventional electric power generation infrastructure was relatively minor, both the transmission and distribution portions of the grid suffered much worse damage than that observed during other hurricanes that affected the U.S. in the past decade. This extensive damage added to logistical limitations and the island orography were important factors that contributed to an extremely slow restoration process leading to a very low resilience for the island's power grid. This paper describes all these aspects in detail and supports the explanation of the hurricane effects with photographic evidence collected during a damage assessment conducted in the early December 2017 when about half of the electricity customers were still without service. This paper concludes by exploring some lessons from these observations including potential options to increase resilience, such as the use of microgrids.
ISSN:2332-7707
2332-7707
DOI:10.1109/JPETS.2019.2900293