No news on the front: Cuba woke up this Friday with the same gloomy news from the Unión Eléctrica (UNE), announcing power outages 24 hours a day due to a high deficit in generating capacity, perhaps one of the highest since the state-owned company began to feign transparency on its social networks.
"For peak hours, an availability of 2,150 MW and a maximum demand of 3,380 MW are estimated, resulting in a deficit of 1,230 MW. Therefore, if the forecasted conditions persist, an impact of 1,300 MW is predicted during this time," stated the company led by Alfredo López Valdés.
Keep an eye on the data: in its report on Thursday, the UNE predicted impacts of around 981 MW. However, on Friday, it acknowledged that its forecasts fell short of reality and admitted that the impacts reached "1,309 MW at 8:50 pm, coinciding with peak hours."
If the same margin of error as the previous day were to be repeated (which left the forecast 26% below the actual impacts, according to UNE data), this Friday Cubans could see the predicted deficit increased by over 300 MW, which could raise the forecast to 1,600 MW, a significant blackout level, as the "cadres" of the "continuity" would say.
In addition to this terrible news, Cubans are still waiting to find out what finally happened to Unit 6 of the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant, which disconnected from the national power system (SEN) less than 24 hours after its synchronization.
The information was withheld from the public opinion after on Monday a comprehensive report by Bernardo Espinosa for Cuban Television highlighted the successes of a technical maintenance stoppage, which kept said unit out of service for 77 days. Since then, the UNE and the official press have not provided explanations of the breakdown suffered in Nuevitas, nor forecasts of the repair date and reconnection to the SEN.
With record-high temperatures for the season and 18 hours of power outages per day, Cubans are beginning to express their discontent publicly through spontaneous protests, as seen this Thursday in Baracoa, where a crowd of residents took to the streets shouting, "We want electricity!"
In this way, this Thursday the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, confirmed that the government foresees that maintenance on the country's thermoelectric units will continue until June 30, a date from which, in theory, power outages in Cuba will decrease.
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