More than 100 people protested Saturday outside LUMA Energy’s headquarters in Santurce over the record 33.86-cent-per-kilowatt-hour electricity rate that took effect in October, in a demonstration called by a Bayamón business owner who said high energy costs forced him to close his shop.
More than 100 people held a protest outside LUMA headquarters in Santurce on Saturday, Oct. 24, to denounce the cost of electricity and the reliability of the grid, Primera Hora reported. Police officers stood guard at the offices on Avenida Juan Ponce de León, which LUMA shares with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, before the picket began.
Christian Delgado Ortiz, who called the protest through social media earlier in the week, said he closed his Bayamón car-detailing business in September because of energy costs and blackouts that damaged equipment. He plans to move to Florida with his children, Primera Hora reported.
“We built the business little by little and got it to a high level, but the cost was too much. The electricity kept going up and the system made things hard for us. Equipment gets damaged by the blackouts,” Delgado Ortiz said, in remarks given in Spanish and translated here. “By September I made the decision to close, because we can’t take it anymore.”
Luz Mojica, a protester, said her electric bill doubled this month, from $24 to $50, even though her home has no air conditioner, washer or dryer. Signs at the protest read “The increases are unsustainable” and “Enough already,” Primera Hora reported.
Residential customers began paying a record 33.86 cents per kilowatt-hour in October after the Energy Bureau approved most of LUMA’s requested fuel-cost adjustment on Sept. 30, based on fuel costs reported by Genera PR. For a household using 800 kilowatt-hours a month, the change adds $42.27 to the bill, as reported when the rate took effect. The rate runs through Dec. 31.
LUMA responded in a written statement that the increase “is a concern we share with the families and businesses of Puerto Rico.” The company said: “We know that high fuel costs and shortcomings in the generation system directly affect the pockets of Puerto Ricans. We reiterate that LUMA does not buy fuel, does not generate electricity and does not approve rate increases.” LUMA said it joins the customers’ call to identify solutions to the root of the problem, and that it respects the protesters’ right to free expression.
LUMA’s latest quarterly report to the Energy Bureau shows 31,150 customers requested payment plans in January and 48,189 in September, about 3% of its roughly 1.5 million customers, Primera Hora reported. Of the September requests, 47,621 came from residential customers, according to El Nuevo Día, which Primera Hora cited.
Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, president of the Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego (UTIER), said at the protest that increases have come gradually since the two private operators, LUMA and Genera PR, took over. He said the assigned operating budgets plus base-rate increases amount to five cents more per kilowatt-hour than under the public system, before fuel costs are counted. He also said LUMA needs “more empathy” toward electricity-dependent customers.
LUMA data submitted to the Energy Bureau show that outages were more frequent but shorter in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, Primera Hora reported.
Related coverage: Record Electricity Rate Takes Effect, Adding $42 to Typical Bill
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Sources: Primera Hora (protest report and LUMA statement, Oct. 24); LUMA Energy written statement as quoted by Primera Hora; Energy Bureau docket NEPR-MI-2020-0001.
Image: AI-generated illustration.
