Puerto Rico has experienced different lengths of island-wide blackouts, depending on the event, but they have generally lasted from about 1–3 days before most power was restored, with some communities waiting longer.

Key time frames people usually mean

When people ask “how long did Puerto Rico go without power,” they often refer to two types of situations:

  1. Major recent blackouts (1–3 days)
    • In mid‑April 2025, an island‑wide blackout cut electricity to about 1.4–1.5 million customers. Most customers had power back in less than 48 hours , with officials estimating 48–72 hours for broad restoration.
 * New Year’s Eve 2024 also saw a massive outage affecting most of the island; power was gradually restored over the next **day or two** , and about a quarter of the island was still out by December 31 as repairs continued into early 2025.
  1. Average outage time over a year
    • In 2024, the average customer in Puerto Rico was without electricity for more than 73 hours total during the year (just over 3 days when you add all outages together), with about 43 of those hours linked to “major events” like storms.
 * In 2022, driven in part by Hurricane Fiona, the average customer experienced **almost 200 hours** without power across the year (over 8 days in total, spread across multiple interruptions).

Why it feels so bad on the ground

  • Puerto Rico’s grid is fragile, so people often face repeated blackouts , not just one long outage.
  • Big events (like hurricanes or system‑wide failures) can knock out power for much of the island, then some neighborhoods get power back quickly, while others wait much longer , sometimes several extra days.

So in simple terms: during the biggest recent island‑wide failures, Puerto Rico went largely without power for about 2–3 days before most electricity was restored, but the real experience for many residents is a pattern of frequent outages that add up to days without power each year.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.