Large ‘spark’ at Santa Isabel substation causes brief outage and some confusion
By The Star Staff
LUMA Energy spokeswoman Belmaris Torres said Wednesday that contrary to what was previously reported, an alleged explosion at a Santa Isabel electrical substation on Tuesday night was actually a large spark.
“In Santa Isabel there was no explosion; we all saw on social networks that it was an electric arc,” the official said in a radio interview. “The substation had, we already had personnel there because we were doing a transfer. We are going to call it a spark because I am not going to go into technical terms.”
“There was an equipment malfunction that caused that spark,” the spokeswoman added. “We were working on the maintenance of that substation and we were transferring the service to a portable substation and that equipment malfunctioned. In an hour and a half we were able to serve all our customers and we were able to maintain that substation.”
The “spark” caused some 6,000 customers to lose electrical service in most sectors of the southern municipality, LUMA reported.
Meanwhile, according to the private operator in charge of the transmission and distribution of electricity on the island, an explosion and fire at a substation in Jayuya on Tuesday “was resolved.”