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The Island of Youth is experiencing staggered and unpredictable power outages that affect all circuits in the area, revealing the Electric Company's inability to meet demand.
The generators are under constant maintenance, and the population endures outages of up to three hours per circuit. A lack of planning and outdated equipment exacerbate the local energy crisis.
On Thursday, the deficit between the available generation and the maximum demand was 15.7 MW compared to 25.7 MW, reported Fermín Molina Alfonso, technical director of the Electric Company in the special municipality in statements to the Cuban News Agency.
The day began with the MAN engine number five out of service, which forced the shutdown of unit number seven to swap components, trying to ensure that both machines were operational for the nighttime peak.
At 3:00 p.m., Unit Six suffered a malfunction in the water header, rendering three base units out of service, along with faults in one of the MTU generator sets, worsening the energy availability.
In light of the situation, lines with lower loads began to be disconnected gradually, but ultimately all circuits in the area were affected, although not simultaneously, the source indicated.
Although a low-capacity MTU and a Hyundai generator were incorporated into the system, the available generation remained insufficient to meet the maximum demand.
During the early hours of Friday, the unit at Atanagildo Cajigal also went out of service, reducing its capacity to 19.6 MW, while the mechanics from Pine Island are working to bring the units back online and reach up to 23 MW, it was noted.
The authorities warn that blackouts could last up to three hours per circuit, depending on demand, weather conditions, and the technical stability of the generators, highlighting a structural crisis that keeps the population in constant uncertainty.
At the end of July, the Director of Commercial Services of the Electric Company in Isla de la Juventud, Yosvany Hernández, urged the population to continue saving energy, despite the prolonged blackouts that affect them.
For years, Cubans have repeated almost like a mantra that "in the Isle of Youth, the power never goes out."
And it wasn't just a popular belief; last March, official sources acknowledged that this territory had its own electricity generation, with sufficient capacity to prevent blackouts, even during mass outages that affected the entire larger island.
But reality dismantled the myth, and the island territory began to experience scheduled blackouts just like those that occur throughout the day and early morning in the rest of the country.
Many note that the start of the scheduled power cuts began in May, following the visit of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, who traveled to the special municipality accompanied by Commander Ramiro Valdés -at the forefront of the "recovery" strategy for the National Electric System- to attend the central event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the release of the dictator Fidel Castro from what is known as the Presidio Modelo.
The crisis has sparked an unprecedented movement of citizen discontent that goes beyond mere complaints about power outages. Social media users recently spread messages calling for the independence of this Cuban territory, demanding a republic of their own, free from the control of the central government in Havana.
Amid growing discontent, the Electric Company of the Isle of Youth called on the public to maintain their trust in its workers.
As a curious note, in June, the director of the dispatch unit of the Electric Union in Isla de la Juventud, Ignacio Moya, , evidence of the distortions in language by the leadership and officials in Cuba to avoid naming reality as it is.
“Power outages continue to occur, meaning the impact on customers, I apologize…,” said Moya. While providing the daily report on the energy situation in the area, he accidentally used the forbidden word, the one that describes the reality faced by the Cuban people daily: outages.
The situation in the Isle of Youth is not very different from what millions of Cubans face across the rest of the country. This Saturday, the state of the National Electric System remains characterized by a collapse manifested in long-lasting blackouts without a planned rotation scheme during a day when the total impact is expected to reach 1,868 megawatts.
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