We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service will be among the utilities sending crews to Puerto Rico to help the U.S. territory rebuild its power grid devastated by Hurricane Maria.
An estimated 40% to 50% of the residents in Puerto Rico still are without electricity three months after the hurricane.
About 35 employees of We Energies and 25 employees of WPS will leave in the second week of January to spend four to six weeks in Puerto Rico, according to WEC Energy Group, the utilities’ parent company.
Trucks and equipment were sent Tuesday to Jacksonville, Fla., where they will be loaded on a barge to be taken to the island, said Barry McNulty, spokesman for Milwaukee-based We Energies.
The We Energies and WPS crews will join almost 1,500 workers and hundreds of trucks with tools and equipment from utilities and energy companies, according to the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities.
Electric utilities help other utilities recover from natural disasters and other events through a mutual assistance program. We Energies, for instance, sent crews to Florida and Georgia this fall after Hurricane Irma.
The costs for mutual assistance typically are covered by the utility that requests the help. But McNulty said the contract for Puerto Rico is through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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The additional 1,500 workers will bring the total number of people working on restoring power in Puerto Rico to more than 5,500, according to the Edison Electric Institute.
The other workers include those from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, utilities in New York and contractors with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority requested additional help in rebuilding its power grid in early November.
Identifying what was needed and how to make the best use of the crews, however, took time.
The We Energies and WPS crews will work under the direction of seven “incident management teams” that were sent to Puerto Rico on Dec. 10.
The teams, each consisting of seven to 10 people, have focused on completing a full assessment of the damage to Puerto Rico’s electric grid and developing an updated restoration plan.