This Tuesday, Cuba will register the highest rate of impact due to blackouts so far this year (discounting the two total disconnections of the system) with a maximum deficit rate of almost 52%, according to the daily forecasts of the state company Electrical Union (A).
This means that More than half of the light bulbs throughout the country will be forcibly turned off during peak hours, the time of greatest energy demand, which takes place during the evening.
The UNE, dependent on the Ministry of Energy and Mines (Mined), calculates for the afternoon-night of this day a maximum electrical generation capacity of 1,556 megawatts (MW) for a demand that will reach 3,080 MW.
The deficit – the difference between supply and demand – will be 1,524 MW and the impact – the circuits that will actually be disconnected to avoid disorderly outages – will reach 1,594 MW during peak hours.
The energy crisis, entrenched with ups and downs for years in Cuba, has worsened significantly since the end of August. In Havana, daily blackouts of at least five hours are being scheduled and in Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the country, only four hours of power a day are guaranteed.
After this 52% deficit, the highest rate so far in 2024 under ordinary conditions was the one announced on October 17, with around 51 percent.
The next day a breakdown in the thermoelectric plant Antonio Guiterasa key power plant, led to a total blackout throughout the country, the first of two that the country has suffered this year and from which it began to emerge three days later.
The passage of Hurricane Rafael just three weeks later led to the second complete disconnection of the National Energy System (SEN).
The Cuban SEN is in a very precarious situation due to the lack of fuel – a result of the lack of foreign currency to import it – and the repeated breakdowns of the country’s obsolete thermoelectric plants, with more than 40 years of operation and chronic deficit of investment and maintenance.
Frequent blackouts weigh down the economy – which has already contracted 1.9% in 2023 – and fuel social discontent, visible in the mass migration of recent years and in the unusual protests that have been registered since 2021 in the country.
(With information from EFE)
