By The Star Staff
LUMA Energy, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) transmission and distribution system operator, recorded $263.1 million in total operating expenditures for the first half of fiscal year (FY) 2023, which began last July, according to a recent filing with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB).
The figure was 5% lower than the $277 million budget forecast for the six-month period that ended Dec. 31, 2022, according to last Tuesday’s filing. The utility’s FY 2023 budget anticipates total operating expenditures of $547.8 million at the close of the fiscal year on June 30.
LUMA took over PREPA’s transmission and distribution system in 2021.
The firm reported a non-federally funded capex of $26.3 million, 39.7% less than the $43.6 million budgeted figure for the June-December 2022 period. Meanwhile, federally funded capex totaled $93.5 million in the first half of 2023, or 67.5% lower than the $287.5 million budgeted figure for the period, it showed.
As for the second quarter of 2023, operating expenses amounted to $137.8 million, 0.9% higher than the $136.6 million planned for the three-month period ended Dec. 31, 2022. Between October and December 2022, non-federally funded capex amounted to $16.7 million and federally funded capex totaled $55.8 million, respectively, 17.7% and 61.3% less than the budgeted second quarter 2023 figures of $20.3 million and $144 million, the report showed.