MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuba slowly recovering from mass blackout

Díaz-Canel blamed the US blockade for Cuba's poor maintenance of its electricity-generating equipment

Cuba was gradually and slowly returning to normalcy late Friday after a power outage that hit most of the country, the National Electroenergetic System (SEN) pointed out in its latest update.

According to the Energy Ministry's Electricity General Director Lázaro Guerra, emergency work was to span into the early hours of Saturday. Cuba's SEN collapsed Friday due to a breakdown in the Guiteras thermoelectric power plant, the state-owned Unión Eléctrica (UNE) also explained.

Despite all efforts, President Miguel Díaz-Canel foresaw that “certain deficit levels will be maintained.” He also blamed the US embargo for the electricity problem because the country's lack of fuel and other inputs was due to a foreign currency shortage stemming from those sanctions, which prevented the modernization of the generation infrastructure and hindered the acquisition of fuels and other resources necessary for this industry, the President also argued. “Of course, we will also be working so that these deficits decrease from what we had in previous days,” he also pointed out in a message at the Palace of the Revolution.

The SEN crisis worsened last week, with almost 51% of the country under simultaneous blackouts lasting about 20 hours a day in some provinces, the UNE also noted. Cubap's electricity generation hinges on seven obsolete thermoelectric power plants undergoing poor to no regular maintenance. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero acknowledged that electricity generation had worsened in recent days.

The Cuban government has leased several floating power plants in recent years to mitigate the lack of generation capacity. Frequent blackouts damage the Cuban economy which contracted by 1.9% in 2023 and is still below 2019 levels.

In this scenario, Cuba Friday halted all non-essential work. “At this time microsystems in all provinces does not mean serving the entire load served by the power grid consumers may be located,” Guerra stressed. “The unit went out of service and the system collapsed, we are at total zero,” he added.