The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority are seeking partners for the restoration, management and operation of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Transmission and Distribution System.
While the partner will administer federal disaster recovery funding for restoration work, the RFQ states that the operator “may have the opportunity to make capital investments in the T&D system not otherwise paid for by federal disaster recovery funding”.
The partner will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of assets such as street lights and meters, outage management and restoration, power procurement, the deployment of new technologies and system planning, including sourcing, designing and implementing system growth and improvements.
Respondents should provide evidence of at least five debt or equity raises, with minimum proceeds of $100m each.
The system consists of 1,115 miles of transmission lines, 1,376 miles of sub-transmission lines and 31,628 miles of distribution lines, with 178 transmission centers, 60 substations, 279 sub-stations and 822 private sub-stations.
The government will retain ownership of all assets.
Interested parties have until November 14 to submit questions, with statements of qualifications due by December 5.
Under the current timeline, the authority expects to have a shortlist on January 16.