The western half of Cuba – where it is located Havana– lost power again on Saturday night, as announced by the state Electrical Union (UNE)in a setback to the recovery work after the two total blackouts consecutive that the country has suffered since this Friday.
Until this new failure, the electrical service had been restored to the 16% of those close to 10 million inhabitants of the island in a complex process of re-energization and stabilization by areas that are progressively expanding and connecting with each other.
“The process of reestablishing the electrical system continues to be complex. Around 10:15 p.m., another disconnection of the western subsystem occurred. Work continues to recover it,” he wrote on social networks. Ministry of Energy and Mines (Minem).
Different neighborhoods of Havana, mostly peripheral, had recovered electricity service throughout this Saturday, as well as some municipalities in other provinces.
In addition, preliminary or start-up work was being carried out in several of the country’s seven thermoelectric plants with the aim of preparing them for synchronization with the SENwhich could once again provide energy to the grid.
The SEN collapsed this Friday morning due to a breakdown in the power plant Antonio Guiteras from Matanzas (west), one of the largest in the country. This “unforeseen departure” has completely destabilized the system and caused a “zero national energy coverage” event, a Complete blackout throughout the country.
Cuba’s energy system is in a very precarious state due to the fuel deficit -the result of the lack of foreign currency to import it- and the frequent breakdowns in obsolete thermoelectric plants, with four decades of operation and chronic lack of investments.
The island currently has seven Soviet-made thermoelectric plants – built more than four decades ago and affected by a chronic investment deficit -, with a total of 20 generation units (seven of them were stopped for breakdowns and maintenance in recent days).
As a result, blackouts have become common for several years. In recent years, the Cuban Government has rented several floating power plants to mitigate the lack of generation capacity.
Frequent blackouts damage the Cuban economy – which in 2023 contracted 1.9% and is still below 2019 levels, according to official data – and is driving social discontent in a society affected by an economic crisis that has worsened in recent years.
They have also triggered anti-government protests, including those of July 11, 2021 -the largest in decades-, and those of the past March 17 in Santiago de Cuba (east) and other locations.
The last time a similar “zero production” situation occurred was in September 2022 after the passage of the Hurricane Ian with category three for the eastern end of the island. This caused a serious imbalance and left the entire country in darkness. Recovery took days.
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