Energy crisis in Cuba: two hours of light and six hours of blackout in Matanzas

In the midst of the current debacle of blackouts, ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged in a recent interview that Cuba is experiencing "an extremely complex situation in the energy sector."

So much so, that the Electric Company of Matanzas reported this Wednesday through its Telegram channel that it was forced to offer its customers a rotation of two hours of power and six hours of blackout per day, resulting in a total of six hours of service and 18 hours of intermittent blackouts.

Dear clients, due to the complex situation of the National Electric System (SEN) and consequently the increasing deficit in generation capacity, it is not possible to comply with the scheduled rotation," stated the company from Matanzas, recognizing that the country's generation capacity is even lower than that calculated by the Cuban Electric Union (UNE).

For this reason, the state company led by Dioelvis Sollet Mosqueda decided to change its power outage schedule and "try to provide electrical service for approximately 2 hours and have 6 hours of disruption, depending on demand behavior."

The restoration of the service will depend on the behavior of the demand and the availability of the system," the company warned as the only possible consolation to convey to customers who month after month pay their electricity bill.

The uncertainty and despair of Cubans facing the current energy crisis is beginning to take its toll among the ranks of officialist journalists and other officials and supporters of the Cuban regime, as evidenced by the recent publications of the Radio Rebelde journalist in Matanzas, José Miguel Solís, who simply shared a screenshot on his social media with information from the Matanzas Electric Company on Telegram.

With this scenario and temperatures in Cuba reaching record highs of 40 degrees in May, the UNE indicated on May 8th that power outages will increase during the month of June due to the increased maintenance work at several Thermal Power Plants (CTE).

As has been reported from January to June, maintenance activities at the Thermal Power Plants, Energás, and Distributed Generation are increasing in order to reach the months of highest consumption and electrical demand, which are July and August, months when the population is also on vacation," said the company led by Alfredo López Valdés.