Reuters and Europa Press
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, December 6, 2024, p. 22
Havana., Cuba reported yesterday that it reconnected its national electrical grid, although generation remained well below demand, a day after a breakdown at a power plant left millions of people on the island without electricity.
The National Electrical Union (UNE) reported the increase in generation to 1,450 megawatts (MW), less than half of the maximum demand of 3,200, suggesting that many on the island were still suffering blackouts.
The (electrical) system is already operating normally, affecting the service due to a deficit in generation capacity, because we do not have enough installation to cover the demand.Lázaro Guerra, director of electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, declared on local television.
We continue working on the approved government plan to recover functionality in the country’s electrical grid, strongly affected by the genocidal blockade of the United Statessaid President Miguel Díaz-Canel on his social networks.
Havana seemed to have returned to normality yesterday. Electricity returned to all circuits in the capital, the local company reported, adding that hospitals were functioning normally.
Approximately half of the country’s power generation facilities are out of service for maintenance or breakdowns. They are all decades old and produce well below their capacity, so most of the country’s residents suffer from outages of several hours daily, even when the grid is operational. Such infrastructure has been on the brink of collapse for years due to fuel shortages, a series of natural disasters and the economic crisis.
The decrease in oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico has led the system to a total crisis this year, causing several blackouts throughout the country that cause unrest and growing frustration among the population.
The blackouts, along with shortages of food, medicine and water, have complicated life on the island to new levels and caused an unprecedented exodus of its residents since 2020.