Puerto Rico holds hearings on proposed power bill increases as customers fume and outages persist

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico is holding key hearings on fee increase requests from private power companies that, if approved, could see the U.S. territory’s average residential bill rise by at least 40% on an island with a high poverty rate and soaring cost of living.

Residents are balking as private power company officials overseeing the generation, transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico insist that additional funding is needed to modernize a crumbling grid that Hurricane Maria razed in 2017.

The hearings, which do not include public input, began in mid-November and are scheduled to continue through late December. They are being held by Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau, which would decide whether to authorize the proposed increases.

In total, the proposed new charges w