US territory plunges into darkness on New Year's Eve 2025

The power outage occurred at dawn, plunging the island into an eerie silence as electrical appliances and air conditioners stopped working, according to local and international media.

Nearly 90% of Puerto Rico's 1.47 million customers were without power, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution.

The company said it was activating emergency operations to restore power and described the outage as “system-wide,” while restoring power could take up to two days.

Puerto Rico has struggled with rolling blackouts due to the destruction of its power grid following Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 4 storm that struck the island in September 2017.

The latest outage appears to be significantly larger than the ones this summer. A June outage left about 350,000 customers without power. In August, 700,000 people lost power after Hurricane Ernesto.

Puerto Rico's electrical system was already crumbling before the storm due to years of lack of maintenance and investment, and some Puerto Ricans now find power outages a near-daily occurrence.

Bui Huy (according to Luma Energy, Independent, Xinhua News Agency)