The ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, his ministers, leaders, and the Cuban Electric Union (UNE) promised that power outages would decrease in the summer thanks to the repair and maintenance work on Cuban thermal power plants carried out in the months leading up to the summer season.
The strategy of maintaining and tuning the thermal power plants to reduce outages during the hottest months and school vacation has not been effective. As a result, Cubans endured long and frequent blackouts in the hope of having a less "hot" summer, but that has not been the case.
Since the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant went out of service on June 27 due to a boiler malfunction, causing a deficit of over 900 MW, the Cuban electroenergy system (SEN) has been unable to generate and supply the electricity required and paid for by the customers of UNE.
Daily deficits since that date have reached the following figures, according to the official media Cubadebate: 1060 MW, 860 MW, 545 MW, 430 MW, 670 MW, 482 MW, 390 MW, 390 MW, 290 MW, 250 MW, 415 MW, 630 MW, 673 MW, 480 MW, 480 MW, 540 MW, 490 MW, 510 MW, 950 MW, and 830 MW.
At the time of writing this note, the UNE has not yet published its informational note for this Sunday, so the expected deficit for the day is unknown.
"We are going to have extended maintenance until June to minimize the inconvenience of blackouts in the summer, especially in the months of July and August," Díaz-Canel promised at the end of May.
At the beginning of that month, the UNE published on its social networks: “As has been reported in these months from January to June, maintenance activities for Thermal Power Plants, Energás, and Distributed Generation are increasing with the purpose of reaching the months of highest electricity consumption and demand, which are July and August, months that are also for the population's rest.”
At the end of May as well, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, did not rule out the possibility of blackouts occurring during the summer, despite the maintenance performed on the country’s thermoelectric plants.
In statements to the official site Cubadebate, De la O Levy stated that "all planned actions for the recovery of the national electric system have been completed and it is expected to face the summer in better conditions," although he did not rule out possible disruptions.
"Before the end of May, we forecast a considerable decrease in the impacts and a summer with better conditions," said the minister.
However, contrary to the forecasts of the government of the so-called "continuity," the lack of diesel fuel, combined with a couple of "unforeseen" breakdowns, doubled the predicted power outages that were expected last Thursday, reaching 1,041 MW during peak hours.
The worst part is that the forecast for blackouts did not improve on Friday, as it once again exceeded 1,000 MW, as revealed by Lázaro Guerra Hernández, general director of Electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
And what did the director of the UNE, Alfredo López Valdés, say at the end of May? "We are aware that we are experiencing significant blackouts, but there is a trend toward improvement," the executive stated optimistically.
As explained then, by July no maintenance work had been planned for any thermoelectric plant, which did not mean that things would go well. "We are going to have the breakdowns that normally occur in the system, we are going to have the limitations that normally occur in the system."
That same optimism was expressed by Díaz-Canel when he stated that "in July and August all the stations will be working, except if they go out due to a breakdown."
However, López Valdés clarified his statements when he said: "We are not sitting idly by, we are fighting, but we cannot commit to something that today... Is there not going to be a blackout? No, we cannot commit."
For his part, the ruler put his expert on the spot, saying that a zero blackout, under the current conditions, is very difficult. "There may be a blackout at a certain hour; what we will work on is to ensure that they are not prolonged, that they are not of long duration," added Díaz-Canel.
At the end of July, the promises of the leader designated by General Raúl Castro and head of "continuity" have once again turned out to be empty words.
And the Cubans continue to endure the blackouts with hardly any protest, despite the predictions from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), which in mid-April blamed the United States for having a plan to incite public disorder on the island amid the current energy crisis.
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