LUMA Filing Puts Numbers on Pymes Power Cliff: Small-Business Electricity Jumped 19% in a Month

Electricity costs for tens of thousands of Puerto Rico businesses rose sharply in October, accentuating the energy burden confronting the island’s commercial sector as regulators continue examining utility rates and affordability.

Data submitted by LUMA Energy to the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau shows that customers served under the General Service at Secondary Distribution Voltage (GSS) rate classification consumed 149.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in October, up 2.5% from 145.6 million kilowatt-hours in September.

Total billings, however, increased at a much faster pace, climbing more than 19% to $51.9 million from $43.5 million a month earlier.

The filing highlights the scale of the small-business market within Puerto Rico’s electric system. The group of customers analyzed consumed nearly 295 million kilowatt-hours over the two-month period and generated roughly $95.4 million in billed revenue, illustrating the sector’s importance to electricity sales and utility revenues.

For policymakers and business leaders, the figures offer fresh evidence of the financial pressures facing Puerto Rico’s small-business sector, where electricity expenditures climbed by more than $8 million in a single month despite only modest growth in overall energy consumption.

The filing comes as business groups argue that energy costs are pushing small firms toward what CB has called the Pymes Power Cliff. As CB reported Oct. 27, the Centro Unido de Detallistas warns that up to 12,000 small and midsize businesses could close, putting about 70,000 jobs at risk, unless electricity bills are cut directly.

That warning has rested on member surveys and owners’ accounts. The LUMA data give that warning an official set of numbers on what small commercial customers actually pay.

The filing covers more than 75,000 commercial accounts that LUMA used as a proxy for Puerto Rico’s micro, small and medium-sized businesses, known locally as Pymes. Average monthly bills rose to about $691 in October, up from $579 in September, while delinquent balances more than 90 days past due totaled about $4.6 million.

The gap between volume and billing points to price rather than consumption. In CB’s calculation, the filing implies an average all-in cost of about 34.8 cents per kilowatt-hour in October, up from about 29.9 cents in September. The regulator’s temporary increase of 5.28 cents per kilowatt-hour for the fourth quarter, applied to October’s 149.3 million kilowatt-hours, would come to about $7.9 million, close to the $8.4 million jump in billings, if the adjustment applied uniformly to these accounts.

The same increase will carry through December, and LUMA reported a $54.4 million fuel-cost deficit for September that could prompt another adjustment, as CB reported Oct. 27.

The averages put the relief measures in perspective. The $3 million in energy aid the governor announced Oct. 23 would reach about 1,000 businesses at roughly $3,000 each, which is more than four months of the average October bill in the filing and about 1.3% of the 75,000 accounts, as CB reported Oct. 27. Owners cited in that report describe bills of $3,000 to $6,000 a month, which suggests the average masks a wide range.

The regulator’s request and its limits

The data were submitted in response to an order from the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, which sought detailed information on electricity consumption and billing among small businesses amid ongoing concerns about the economic impact of energy costs on the island’s private sector following a temporary rate hike of 5.28 cents per kilowatt-hour imposed by the regulator for the final quarter (October to December) of 2026 due to fuel costs.

The reveal could hardly come at a worse time for the economy. As CB reported Nov. 4, V2A Consulting finds the economy roughly level with three years ago, with payroll employment largely flat since 2024 and commercial electricity prices up 31% since 2019.

The firm estimates that a 20% increase in power costs would remove about $935 million a year from the economy.

Consumer prices rose 3.8% in September, unemployment reached 6.0% in July, and forecasts for fiscal 2027 range from a 1.4% contraction in real GNP, projected by Estudios Técnicos, to 0.3% growth in real GDP, projected by Moody’s Analytics.

In that setting, small businesses have little room to pass higher power costs on to customers who are themselves stretched.

While the figures provide one of the most comprehensive snapshots to date of energy usage and costs among smaller commercial customers, LUMA cautioned that the dataset does not represent a definitive count of Pymes.

The company said it lacks information on annual revenues and employee counts, the criteria Puerto Rico law uses to classify businesses as micro, small or medium-sized enterprises.

As a result, it relied on the GSS customer class, which generally serves smaller commercial accounts and represents what the company called the closest available proxy.

What the data cannot yet say

Alongside the consumption and billing data, LUMA asked regulators to keep customer-identifying information under seal, arguing that account names, account numbers and tax identification information are protected by contractual confidentiality obligations and Puerto Rico privacy laws.

The utility submitted both a public version and a confidential version of the dataset, with only identifying information redacted from the public filing.

Taken together, the filing turns a warning into a measurable trend: a single quarterly adjustment added about 19% to small-business bills in a month, with almost no change in how much power they used.

What it cannot yet show is how many of the 75,000 accounts are the 12,000 firms that business groups say are at risk, since LUMA lacks the revenue and employment data that define a Pyme. Account-level data tied to size and sector would show where the cliff is steepest and whether the $3 million in aid reaches the right firms.