The energy crisis in Cuba took another step this Monday when the island’s authorities they began to apply scheduled power outages in Havana, Until now barely affected by its status as capital, tourist hub and main urban center, more than two months after taking the same measure in other provinces due to the difficulties in producing and distributing energy on the island.
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The residents of the capital, with 2.1 million inhabitants, will suffer two blackouts a week of four hours each, Governor Reinaldo García Zapata announced on Friday, quoted by the official newspaper Tribuna de La Habana.
The cuts will not affect hospitals or water and gas pumping, among other services, García Zapata said.
“This is the time to contribute so that the rest of Cuba suffers less from the undesirable blackouts,” said the governor, asking Havanans to be “in solidarity” with the population of the provinces.
The government has admitted that the island’s energy situation will not be solved in the short term and has recognized that the problem is generating strong irritation in society.
“It hurts us, it upsets us that the population has to go through this situation,” said the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in his last speech to Parliament.
The president added: “Rest assured that no one puts the blackouts here to annoy anyone.”
His intervention took place at a time of tension, both in the electricity system itself and among the population.
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Since March the cuts have been intensifying on the island and in recent weeks there have been minor protests in various parts of the country with blackouts as the reason.
In the last four months, the state Electric Union (UNE) has advanced power cuts in different areas almost daily.
The company has announced a deficit that sometimes exceeds 20% of the maximum generation capacity during peak hours.
In some cases, the inhabitants of different provinces of the country have denounced in networks cuts of more than 10 hours a day.
The energy problem is of particular concern to the Government due to its sensitivity. Since May, the Presidency has reported every morning on the availability of megawatts per day.
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Protests against the cuts
The discomfort caused by the blackouts was one of the reasons that motivated the anti-government protests on July 11, 2021, the largest in decades, according to different analysts.
The country was then going through a health crisis due to the pandemic and another economic crisis, which still persists, with shortages of food and medicine, high inflation and the expansion of the controversial stores in hard currency.
To this were added the cuts, which prevent the use of air conditioners -in the warmer months of the year-, electric stoves, card purchases and, if they are prolonged, they end up affecting mobile communications and frozen food.
“When there is a power outage, life is bound to come to a standstill” and that negatively affects “the framework of expectations” of people, explained Cuban sociologist Diosnara Ortega, director of the School of Sociology at the Chilean Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez. .
The blackouts have generated minor protests in recent weeks in different parts of the country and have been reproduced in videos that travel through social networks. The most recent were registered this Monday in Santiago de Cuba, second city and former capital of the island.
The official press has reported on at least two demonstrations, one at the University of Camagüey and another, a few weeks ago, in the western town of Los Palacios. In social networks, around half a dozen protests have been noticed.
Díaz-Canel referred directly to the non-conformists “who, by conviction or not, are responding to what the counterrevolution wants” and “what those who have us blocked want, that those are the ones who first caused this whole situation,” in reference to US sanctions
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“(They) are acting in accordance with the enemy’s plan, not with our plan, our plan has to be one of understanding, solidarity and, as always, resistance,” he said.
Along these lines, the provincial government of Havana announced on Friday that starting this Monday and, at least in the first fortnight of August, the different areas of the capital would suffer cuts of four hours twice a week.
The city had hardly been affected so far by the energy crisis. What weighs here, according to analysts, is its status as a government, tourist and economic center, and the memory that Havana -the country’s largest urban center- was the epicenter of the protests on July 11, 2021.
an old system
The blackouts are due to maintenance work on the obsolete power generation plants and frequent breakdowns in these facilities in the country.
According to the Government, the problems are due in part to breakdowns in the plants, the lack of fuel for generation and scheduled maintenance.
Breakdowns or closures for repairs have affected a large part of the 8 terrestrial thermoelectric plants (CTE) in the country. In a good number of them they are close to fulfilling their maximum life expectancy.
In addition, since the end of 2021 the island has used five floating plants leased from a Turkish company to support the outdated electricity production system.
For this Monday, the UNE has reported that a total of nine units of five CTE are out of service due to failure, two of them in Felton (eastern Cuba), one of the largest power generators on the island.
The latter suffered a fire on July 8 and since then it has had problems operating normally.
In his speech, Díaz-Canel explained that the country has a strategy that “was working well” but that the Felton incident “ruined it to the ground.”
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energy dependency
Cuba relies heavily on foreign oil to produce energy (thermoelectric plants generate two-thirds of the electricity) and its main supplier, Venezuela, has notably reduced its shipments.
The Cuban government aspires to reduce this dependency and has a plan so that by 2030 37% of its energy mix (just over 3,500 megawatts) comes from renewable sources.
At the end of last year, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Liván Arronte Cruz, pointed out that the implementation of this policy is 40% behind.
*With information from AFP and EFE
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