Four small areas of Havana they begin to have electrical energy on Friday night after the start of the recovery process of the National Electroenergy System (SEN) after the total blackout that the country suffered from the beginning of the day.
In a recent update on the “energy emergency” that occurred on the island, the general director of Electricity of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (Minem), Lázaro Guerra, explained that the microsystem restoration process throughout the island to bring energy to the thermoelectric plants.
The specialist said that they will work all night and into the early hours of Saturday to get the available generating units started and gradually restore the interconnection of the SEN in the western-central and eastern areas of the island, although with “limited power.”
The SEN collapsed this Friday due to a breakdown at the Guiteras thermoelectric plantone of the main generators in the country, according to the state-owned Unión Eléctrica (UNE), dependent on the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said in a meeting to analyze the energy crisis situation that “there will be no rest” until electrical service is restored on the island and stressed that the situation is “tense” and “complex”according to state television news.
The president stressed that “certain levels of deficit will be maintained” and work will be done to reduce this “energy emergency” whose fundamental causes are the lack of fuel availabilityforeign exchange for repairs and electricity generation capacity.
This circumstance has caused the island Government to paralyze non-essential state work activity since this Friday as part of a series of measures announced the day before to face the current energy crisis.
The energy crisis
The SEN crisis worsened in the last week with effects that reached the maximum so far this year with almost 51% of the country with simultaneous blackouts, according to daily reports from the UNE.
This meant that the power outages simultaneously affected more than half of the islandand caused blackouts of up to 20 hours in some provinces.
The Cuban electrical system is in a very precarious state due to frequent breakdowns in the generating units of its seven thermoelectric plants, obsolete due to their more than four decades of use and the chronic lack of investments and maintenance, to which is added the deficit of imported fuel (diesel and fuel oil) and shortage of foreign currency.
Blackouts have been common for several years, but since the end of August the situation has worsened to reach levels similar to those of the worst moments, such as the beginning of this year and July and August of 2021 and 2022.
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 drive social discontent in a society affected by an economic crisis worsened in the last years.
They have also triggered anti-government protests, including those on July 11, 2021 – the largest in decades – and those on March 17 in Santiago de Cuba (east) and other locations.
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