People. Partnerships. Progress.
The island of Puerto Rico is located approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south, and is home to more than 3 million people and more than 300 miles of beaches. Puerto Rico is in the primary path of Atlantic Ocean weather systems and experiences frequent hurricanes and tropical storms.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) vision for Puerto Rico is an electric system that aims to meet energy demands and power the island on a pathway to affordability, prosperity, national security, and energy dominance. To support Puerto Rico’s grid resiliency, we are prioritizing infrastructure delivery and bringing generation online.
Powering Up: Opportunities & Updates
Our electric system modernization efforts in Puerto Rico are structured to prioritize projects with measurable, near-term, positive impacts on system stability and customer costs and to develop a long-term strategy that stabilizes the current system to prevent failures, optimizes performance for reliability and efficiency, and grows with strategic generation and infrastructure improvements.
DOE’s reallocated funding supports practical fixes, common-sense repairs, and emergency activities that rebuild the grid’s foundation and make energy reliable and affordable for all Puerto Rican families and businesses, not just a select few. Rebalancing funds toward plant upgrades and critical grid work is about fixing the basics first—laying a strong foundation—so that we can tackle more complex system-wide challenges.
Since February 2025, DOE has been partnering with local, state, and federal agencies to facilitate major infrastructure repairs and upgrades that are making energy more reliable for more than three million people. As a result of DOE’s approach, Puerto Rico hasn’t experienced an unplanned island-wide blackout since April 2025.
Why Puerto Rico, and Why DOE?
In February 2025, Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón requested that DOE launch a comprehensive assessment of the island’s electric grid. Years of underinvestment and the lasting impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 left the electrical system fragile and vulnerable.
DOE is uniquely positioned to drive positive change for Puerto Rico’s grid because of its stakeholder engagement and proven expertise in power systems within DOE Headquarters and among our national laboratory partners.
DOE Office of Electricity (OE) is leading this effort to do the following:
- diagnose critical grid failures
- identify barriers to recovery and modernization
- strengthen the energy system by implementing actionable, engineering-driven recommendations.
DOE’s vision for Puerto Rico is an electric system that aims to meet energy demands and power the island on a pathway to affordability, prosperity, national security, and energy dominance.
This initiative is led by Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Catherine Jereza alongside a multidisciplinary DOE team dedicated to Puerto Rico’s energy transformation.
Our mission in Puerto Rico is to stabilize, optimize, and grow the electricity system so that the grid delivers affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the entire island.
- Affordability: Lowering energy bills for consumers so that they can afford other basic household expenses without feeling overburdened.
- Reliability: Ensuring the power system’s ability to consistently deliver electricity to homes, buildings, and devices, even in the face of instability, uncontrolled events, cascading failures, or unanticipated loss of system components.
- Security: Enhancing the ability of Puerto Rico’s electricity system to withstand and recover from disruptions—such as power outages, natural disasters, or cyberattacks—and safeguarding uninterrupted supply chain operations and availability of critical grid components.
We focus on practical results that bring Puerto Ricans affordable energy while improving grid reliability and resilience.
Our immediate goal to prioritize and support projects that show measurable impacts on cost reduction and system stability ties into our long-term strategy to apply a Stabilize–Optimize–Grow framework:
- Stabilize the current system to prevent failures
- Optimize performance for efficiency and reliability
- Grow with strategic generation and modern infrastructure.
Reliable power requires investment, partnership, and a shared commitment to solving challenges together. Every megawatt restored strengthens communities, supports economic growth, and moves Puerto Rico toward a more affordable, reliable, and secure electric system.